


been catching all your ghosts for every season

by sondersoflight



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Past Child Abuse, Period-Typical Homophobia, background Nancy Wheeler/Jonathan Byers, background mike wheeler/jane hopper, some descriptions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-06-27 04:36:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19783390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sondersoflight/pseuds/sondersoflight
Summary: He knows it’s Hargrove before he turns around. His voice sounds rough, like he has not spoken in days but it still holds that mocking tone he has perfected.He turns around slowly.“Are you haunting me?” Is the first thing out of his mouth. “I’m going crazy.”





	1. Part I.

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write a fic where Billy is captured by the russians and Steve and him fall in love and then they rescue him and it got out of control with how long it is. this is unbetaed and also ignores some plot points of S3 because they deserved to be ignored, honestly. hover over the russian bits for translation.

Billy had always been hopeful. In the end is what he assumed killed him.

He had learned at a young age how to be careful. He had to. Growing up around his father left him with no choice. When he was young, he worshipped the ground Neil walked on. He loved his mother more than anyone in the world. They had repaid that love by abandoning him and abusing him.

So he learned how to hide every aspect of his personality that did not please his father. That was most of it on the bad days. But he had always hoped and tried to kill that hope inside him at the same time, hoped that one day things would change. Hoped that one day something or someone would save him.

No one does. No one even tries to. And that is how he ends up saving that little girl.

 _You were happy._ She had said. Billy barely remembered what it felt like, happiness was like the lyrics of a song he heard on the radio once and no matter how hard he tried to remember, all he could recall was the soft tune some nights.

But it’s done and it’s over. And he dies, a hero’s death.

Until it isn’t.

He wakes up when the first electric shock goes through his body.

He does not know where he is, he is barely hanging to who he is. All he can feel is the needles of electricity entering his skin, from everywhere. His entire body is on fire and for some reason he feels like he can pick every pain apart. From his skin to his veins and muscles. It is searing and destructive.

He screams and screams, until his throat is raw and his voice feels like something foreign and wrong. Something that does not belong to him.

His body has never left him. It endured his mother’s abandonment, his father’s abuse, Susan’s indifference and everyone else’s. When that damned creature had gone through his chest he had thought all the suffering was over.

He was wrong. _So wrong_.

He did not even know where he was. He barely remembered the whispers – the letting go and then coming back once again, latching onto the searing pain going through each cell in his body.

“Он хорошо развивается” someone next to him muttered. Billy could not understand at all. “Но мы должны продолжать идти”

It did not matter. They were not speaking with him. They were not even acknowledging him, even though it was evident they were speaking of him. It occurs to him through a hazy memory that this is not the first time he has been woken up like this.

Hazily like trying to pull from the end of a thread he tries to recall, to remember. The biting sensation of the cold comes first, and then the shock of electricity over and over. How long has he been here?

But as soon as it slowly starts coming back he hears a rustle by his side and someone says,

“Начать снова”

And everything goes black.

*

The funeral is something quiet.

There is no body to bury but Jane insists. She has tears in her eyes and when Joyce says they ought to give Hopper a proper send off she says.

“Billy too.”

Max nods in agreement, she has barely said anything this last days. Steve doesn’t know how to act around her. He was under the impression that Billy and her were nothing but two strangers living under the same roof. But the way she had cried at the mall and in the car and every morning since then suggested otherwise.

Billy’s father did not attend. He did not even contact the police station to find out what had happened to his son. Max’s mother per her daughter’s request pays for the service, and Max stands by as they lower the empty casket into the ground.

It’s a bit ridiculous if Steve really thinks about it, none of the people standing around really liked Billy or knew him at all. Not even him. He feels a pang of guilt about not even bothering but honestly, Billy was not an easy person to get to know.

 _He tried to kill you,_ a friendly voice in his head says and then another one replies, _You left him to die._

Steve is really losing his mind.

He feels even more guilty when he sees Max, with her red fiery hair pulled back holding Jane’s hand while they both shed silent tears.

 _He saved me_ , Jane had said after and she kept repeating it when anyone asks, _he saved me_.

And that was what puzzled Steve the most. Was it possible that there was another side to Billy? Something he had missed after he had shelved him off as another psychotic jock with anger issues?

Lucas steps forward and grabs Max’s other hand, squeezing it.

A light rain falls over Hawkins and no one dares say a word. Max’s mom, Susan, only leads her by the shoulder to the car quietly. Steve stays by Jane a couple of more minutes, not minding the rain that keeps falling on them steadily.

Dustin, Mike, Lucas and Will are standing somewhere behind them with Joyce. Steve thinks, all of them have gone through too much for how young they are and wonders, why is it so unfair.

“He was not a monster,” Jane finally speaks after minutes that feel like hours, she looks up at Steve with her big brown eyes, “He was hurt, like me. But good inside.”

Somehow Steve does not find it himself to speak past the lump in his throat.

*

A couple of weeks go by before Steve realizes something is wrong.

Everything has been dull; the rain has not stopped for days and it seems like all the bright colors the summer air brought have been washed out. The kids are not up for much these days and Steve does not think he is either.

Sometimes when he closes his eyes all he can see is Billy in that car where he left him.

Robin is not much company, she has started dating a girl from a town over and all she wants to do all day is be with her. Steve is happy for her, really. Is just that…he is still going through something. What exactly, he does not know yet.

He is mostly alone at home, as always, and with the bad weather and gloomy mood the only thing left to do is sleep these days. That is how it first happens. That is why he first assumes it is a dream, fueled by the strange guilt he has been feeling for the last couple of days.

He is lying on the couch in his living room, his eyelids feel heavy with sleep and a second later, he finds himself standing in the middle of…nowhere. There is a vast space of darkness all around him, but it is not scary, it’s not calming.

It is nothing.

He walks a couple of steps to every side possible, there is not any kind of impediment on his way. He yells for a while but he does not even hear an echo. This is one of his most boring dreams to date.

Suddenly he sees a white dot in the distance.

He starts running towards it, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger until he realizes it’s not a thing, it’s a someone. He runs faster, suddenly feeling an uneasiness in his chest that weights heavier than his feet.

The closer he gets the more details he can make out. The person is dressed in all white clothes, like they are in a hospital. They are curled down on the floor, if there is a floor in this place, holding their knees to their chest and hiding their face. Steve can see that their head is shaved.

When he finally reaches the person, he kneels breathing heavily and tries to stretch forward to touch their arm. The skin is cold under his fingertips and it’s the first feeling of something foreign he gets from this weird dream.

He is not prepared when they look up.

It’s Billy.

Billy, with his hair shaved and his eyes sunken. His skin looks yellowish and he is much skinnier than Steve remembers. He looks like he came back from the dead. Steve can see bruises on his face, his arms, there are small red dots on the side of his head and his wrists that look like burns. He can see a splotch of ink on the inside of his forearm that reads 017.

Steve screams. And he wakes up.

He is back in his cozy living room, the tv is on in the background and he can hear the rain pitter patter against the window. He feels uneasy, like he just saw something he should not have. His hands are sweating, and his hair is sticking to his forehead.

His hands are shaking, he can still feel the cold skin of Billy’s arm under his fingertips.

“It’s just a bad dream,” he whispers to himself and it sounds like another lie. “It’s just a bad dream calm down.”

*

The first time it happens is an accident.

Billy has been locked in what they call “карцер.” He does not understand Russian, but he is sure this is some sort of punishment cell. Punishment for what, Billy is not sure.

He is barely awake these days, does not even have the strength to fight. They keep pumping electricity and syringes into his body and he feels like he grows weaker and weaker by the minute.

He likes the punishment cell. It’s quiet and no one pinches or probes him. He wishes he could sleep, wishes he could have back just the horror of Neil’s fists instead of this but he knows better than anyone that wishing is futile. They have branded him and they own him. Anyone who knew him thinks he is dead and no one cares enough to find him, wherever he is.

He closes his eyes and thinks of the seven feet wave and his mother’s blonde hair, thinks of Max’s red fiery flame and the sound of her skateboard against the asphalt and how she had sung so loud that one morning. He hopes she knows he really tried.

He closes his eyes for a moment, wishing so hard that he could speak with someone, with anyone at all.

He must have fallen asleep because when he opens his eyes he is in a dark place. There is black everywhere around him, but he can see. Miles and miles of just empty space stretching everywhere.

Suddenly, he hears someone walking behind him.

He turns around abruptly like a scared animal waiting for a strike, and that is when he sees her. She looks smaller than she did the last time but the same tears are brimming her eyes, threatening to fall.

Jane.

“Billy,” she says smiling. “Found you.”

Billy takes a step back. He doesn’t know what he is afraid of. Himself mostly, of how he could hurt her.

“You will not.” She says staring at him firmly. Billy’s eyes widen in surprise and she smiles a little at that. “I’m like you.”

That is when she turns her arm and Billy sees the ink on her forearm. 011.

Billy wants for the first time in many weeks to cry. He doesn’t care what these people have done to him, he is seen just as bad for the rest of his life. But this is a little girl, she is just Max’s age. Suddenly all he can think of is Max, living in that house with Neil while he has no one to take out his anger on.

And for the first time since…well since everything started, Billy feels something building within him, that is like rage, white hot anger but more powerful. He doesn’t know how but his whole body goes tense and he feels a trickle of blood coming from his nose.

Jane opens her mouth in surprise and then smiles sadly.

“You are special,” she says. “Like me.”

“You are nothing like me.” He finally speaks. His voice sounds croaky and unused. He can’t remember the last words he spoke that were not screams, seem like a lifetime ago. “I’m a bad person. I deserve this.” He continues, and he feels how his voice starts trembling.

There is no point of keeping his bravado here, with this little girl in this place he does not know. This is probably all an hallucination of his barely hanging mind.

“I hurt people.” He says “I hurt you.”

“That wasn’t you.” She says sadly.

“I mean before…” he waves with his hand. It was not the mindflayer that made him evil. It just made him…more.

“Sometimes when I get angry, I hurt people too.” She says. “Does that makes me bad?”

Billy can’t imagine how this little girl could hurt anyone. He smiles sadly.

“No.”

She nods.

“Jim is gone.” She says, “I miss him and it makes me want to…” and she closes her hands into fists. “But there was a word he had.”

Billy nods to encourage her to keep going on.

“Forgiveness and redemption.”

 _That is a phrase not a word._ He wants to say but it’s too familiar, too close to the _Respect and Responsibility._

“I don’t deserve that.” He says quickly.

“Everyone can be better.” She replies. “Will you let me know where you are?”

Billy stays quiet for a while. He doesn’t know how but he knows everything that is going through her now. She’s happy she found him, she feels hopeful. She wants to risk something for him. But it’s too dangerous and he is not worth it.

“You saved me,” she says once again reading him. “I save you now.”

Suddenly Billy opens his eyes and he is back in the punishment cell. Someone is unlocking the door from the outside, and he can feel the blood coming out of his nose. When he looks around, he sees the chair that was in the left corner of the room has flown across to the other side and lays there as if someone had thrown it.

He hopes Jane is safe. He hopes she won’t ever find him.

*

It happens again.

Steve is at the Byers sitting on the couch while the kids play around. They keep insisting for him to join but he is not up to it. Had an unnaturally long shift at the store and does not feel like anything.

It might also have to do with going to pick a forgotten bag from the pool and finding Billy’s picture stuck on the lifeguards pinboard. But he does not want to recognize the heavy guilt.

His vision becomes blurry and he closes his eyes for a moment.

When he opens them again he is back at the black place. He starts panicking immediately, pinching himself to wake up but there’s no use. There is no way out of here. He tries screaming himself awake but it doesn’t work either.

“Are you done?”

He knows is Hargrove before he turns around. His voice sounds rough, like he has not spoken in days but it still holds that mocking tone he has perfected.

He turns around slowly.

“Are you haunting me?” Is the first thing out of his mouth. “I’m going crazy.”

Billy looks enough like a ghost or a zombie. His head is still shaved and his eyes are sunken from how skinny he is. He looks like he has been beaten and there is caked blood on his face. He still looks at Steve conceitedly as if he was leaning against his Camaro on a June afternoon.

“Why would I imagine you like this?” He wonders out loud.

“Maybe you are a sadist,” Billy provides. “Maybe you want to see me suffer.”

No that can’t be it. This is some sort of punishment his mind is executing on him.

“I’m sorry I left you to die in a burning car,” Steve tries. Maybe he needs to apologize and this torture will stop.

“No you are not,” Billy replies. Because not even in his subconscious can undead Billy make things easy for him.

But he is also right. Steve is not apologizing out of sincere regret. He is just doing it to gain something. To gain peace of mind.

“What do you want?” He asks, wishing for a minute that something in his life could be straightforward.

Billy shrugs and he suddenly looks smaller and insecure. Steve notices his lip is split and that his eyes look red, like he has not been sleeping at all. It is weird how detailed this image his mind is providing is. The deep blue of Billy’s eyes makes him lose focus for a minute.

“I have to find someway to wake myself up.” Steve says to himself and when he is about to start screaming again, he hears an almost too low sound.

“Wait.”

Steve opens his eyes and Billy is looking everywhere but at him.

“I was hoping for someone else, I didn’t know it would be you again.” He says and Steve does not understand at all. “I just wanted…someone to talk to.”

He sighs as if saying it out loud is causing him physical pain.

“Oh god, I am losing my mind!” Steve exclaims and let’s himself fall. He hits something hard because obviously this black soulless place has walls. Walls he can’t see.

“Maybe this is some way for your mind to cope,” Billy says as he falls besides him. “You need to talk it out with yourself.”

His mind haunting ghost is playing along with him. There is something wrong. But Steve suddenly stops dwelling on it. Maybe he does need some time for a little introspection. Maybe this is his way of dealing with everything that has happened to him and he needs to let it out.

“Don’t try to convince me,” says Steve. Maybe he is right, maybe this is way his subconscious has found to deal with this and have some…forgiveness, closure. Something.

They stay quiet for a while, but the silence is not uncomfortable. Steve can hear the slow sound of Billy’s breathing besides him and he knows that if he strains his ears he would be able to hear the beating of his heart.

“El told me what you did for her.” Steve finally speaks after a couple of minutes, Billy looks confused. “Jane. We call her El because…”

“I know why you do.” Billy says angrily “Don’t call her that.”

Of course, he would, if he is an hallucination of his own mind, mind haunter Billy knows the same things Steve knows.

“I wish I had a smoke,” Billy says.

When Steve turns to look at him Billy has his eyes shut tight, as if he is willing himself away from this dark corner in his mind. Steve never had Billy so close so he is confused at the details his mind has procured. Billy has the longest eyelashes, and on his cheeks, hidden under the smudged blood and the yellow and purple bruises, there are small constellation of freckles.

He doesn’t know why but suddenly he wants to reach out and trace them with his thumb. He balls his hands into fists to avoid it, even if he thinks this product of his own imagination would let him. The real Billy would have not. And it feels…disrespectful to go against him somehow.

“I’m sorry,” Billy speaks again, the break in the silence startles Steve. “I’m sorry for how bad I…how I beat you that night at Byers. It wasn’t you I wanted to hurt.”

Steve doesn’t speak for a while and then he says, “I forgive you,” and he finds he really means it.

He is about to say something else when Billy suddenly opens his eyes, looking alarmed. For a minute, Steve think he is going to snap and hit him but all he sees is a trickle of fresh blood coming out of his nose.

Everything shakes for a minute and then Steve falls back. When he opens his eyes he is awake again.

And El-Jane is standing right besides him, her small hand covering his. She is looking at him like she knows.

“Okay?” she says slowly.

“Yeah,” Steve mutters, his throat dry “Just a bad dream.”

Somehow, her sad smile tells him it was not a dream at all.

*

When Billy had been younger, and his mother was still by his side, he had been fearless.

Not fearless in that way he pretended to be when arriving at Hawkins. Always on edge, challenging everyone and wanting to fight constantly for no reason. He had been truly fearless.

When he was 6 his mother had tried to teach him how to play the guitar. It was hard, he never liked making mistakes, even less when there was someone else there to point them out. Until one day, it all finally clicked, and he was able to play a whole song with stumbling fingers.

His mom had smiled and said something about love and music feeling the same way.

She had been the sweetest, most understanding person. She had loved him more than anyone in his life and she had left it all the same. Billy did not blame her, even now, he understood Neil’s abuse was too much for her to bear.

He just didn’t understand why she had left him behind.

As he had grown up, Billy realized love was nothing like music. Music made him feel light and fearless once again as if he were a little child. Love on the other hand, made him nervous, scared, made him feel like an outcast, made him have to hide it well enough for his father not to know it.

Sometimes the anger of it all made him so blind he had to pour it out. There was only so much his body could stand. So, Neil poured and poured anger into him and Billy poured it into the world.

Now Neil was gone too, and Billy could feel the people around him pouring poison into him, altering his body and breaking it down to make it better, to make it something else than human.

His stomach was torn apart and now it looks like it has been made anew. Billy sees the scars, sometimes when they come to get him they turn on the light for a couple of seconds and he sees his naked chest, crossed all over by white lines.

The next time they come to get him, they don’t take him to the metal bed to tie him down and electrocute him. They don’t inject anything into him. Instead they lead him to a huge room, that looks to be set up as an operating theater. Except the room is empty and there are people by the two-way glasses, watching him intently.

After a couple of minutes, a man walks in, he is wearing a doctor’s robe. His shoes and hair pristine.

“William,” he says in a thick British accent. “I am so glad to see how much progress you have been making. We have detected some advanced brain activity while you have been in your room.”

The punishment cell, he calls that his room.

“We were hoping for a little…demonstration.”

The man smiles and nods and a second later another group of doctors enter the room and hook him to a machine using a helmet. Billy does not even wince when he feels a needle puncture through his arm.

The doctors hurriedly leave the room shutting the heavy metal door behind them.

“Now William,” the man says once again.

But he never finishes, and a second later Billy feels an electric shock going through his body. His knees almost give out but he keeps standing with trembling legs.

“Nothing? Let’s go again.” He says and Billy feels another electroshock, harder this time, it feels like every cell in his body is splitting apart with the pain of it.

His knees finally give out and he scrapes them when falls in the hard-concrete floor.

“You are stronger than you seem William,” the man says, smiling “More resilient. I guess we will have to find another way to get you angry.”

Billy feels a shiver run down his back.

“Take him back to his room.” The man says dropping his sympathetic façade and walking away through one of the heavy metal doors.

When he leaves, all the glasses in the room vibrate with Billy’s anger for a second.

*

“I think there is something wrong with me.” Billy says the next time he is in…the black space with Jane.

“Not wrong,” she says smiling. “Just different. Like me.”

“They want me to be their monster.” Billy explains, because he knows. He somehow knows a lot of things these days even if no one outright says them. “And sometimes I am so angry, I want to be.”

Jane looks with the saddest most comprehensive eyes.

“I am angry too sometimes,” she says, “Can I show you?”

Billy nods. And suddenly he feels a force that throws his body across the empty space a couple of meters. He sees the fire in Jane’s eyes.

“I think…” he says, less surprised than he should be. “…they made me like you.”

Jane smiles, and for the first time since he met her she seems amused.

“Try,” she says, “You won’t hurt me.”

“I don’t know what I’m capable of,” he replies in a low tone “I don’t want to do something I’ll regret.”

“You have to really focus Billy,” she says “It’s hard at first, like a bike, but then…” she gestures and smiles kindly.

“If they find out I can,” Billy asks “Will they make me hurt people for them? Can I hide this from them?”

Jane looks at the floor for a minute and then she answers, “I don’t know, I was never able to…” she sighs, “But you will be able to fight back,”

“They will punish me,” Billy states but he knows what that is like. All his life he has been punished for fighting back, at least this would give him a shot.

“Now try to throw me,” she nods enthusiastically.

Billy closes his eyes and shoves.

When he opens them, he is back in the punishment cell and the mattress he was sitting on is in the corner across the room.

*

The kids are up to something.

They think Steve has not realized yet, but he is not stupid. He probably isn’t the sharpest, but he does realize, specially about Max and Jane. All the times he has hung out with them they seem to be missing, doing something else Dustin and Mike always say and yet, they never specify. They don’t have any secrets, so Steve knows this is something bad.

He waits until one afternoon he knows they are all at the arcade and drives to the Byers house. He knows Joyce is at work and Jonathan is somewhere with Nancy, so Max and Jane have the house for themselves.

He is not expecting what he sees when he walks in.

Jane is sitting on the couch; her eyes are covered by a blindfold and she is sitting incredibly still. Across from her, Max watches in silence. There is an open book resting on Jane’s legs.

“What is this?” he asks loudly and they both jump, Jane removes the blindfold abruptly. Steve notices that her eyes are red.

“Steve!” Max yells and she looks more alive than she’s been in weeks. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m asking the questions here,” he says and looks back at Jane. “What were you doing?”

“Nothing,” Max says again and at the same time Jane says, “Found him.”

Max looks back widening her eyes in surprise and looking slightly betrayed. Jane shrugs in apology and says, “Nothing he can do.”

“Found who?” Steve interrupts again walking some steps into the living room. “Hopper?” he says almost breathless.

Both girls look at each other for a minute, as if they are having a silent discussion Steve can’t make out. He starts growing nervous and after some seconds he clears his throat.

“No,” Max says, “Billy.”

Steve thinks he is going to faint.

“He is alive,” Jane says, “They are hurting him.”

“How,” Steve says with his voice trembling “How did you find him?”

“Well, Neil didn’t keep any pictures of him at all.” Max explains, “But when I was going through his room I found this,” she points at the open notebook that fell to the floor when Jane jumped. “It’s some sort of…. diary I guess. And she was able to find him.”

“But now he finds me too,” Jane says smiling, “He can find me.”

Steve feels as if all the blood in his body suddenly went to his head. He feels lightheaded almost as if he is floating and he is pretty sure his hands are sweating, and he has full body shivers.

“He found you too,” Jane explains to him.

“I thought it was a dream,” Steve whispering covering his mouth. “I thought…”

Max bites her lip and stares at him intently.

“Who is hurting him?” Steve asks after a couple of minutes. He remembers the Billy in his dream…encounter, whatever. He was decrepit, his skin yellow, his eyes sunken, he looked like a shadow of who he used to be.

“Others like papa,” Jane says, “They are trying to make him...something else.”

The neat drawing of the number inside Billy’s forearm flashes through his mind.

“Isn’t it dangerous for you?” Steve asks, “Can they find you?”

“No,” Jane says, “That is why Max is here.”

“I don’t let her be gone more than fifteen minutes,” Max explains, “You can’t tell anyone Steve, I mean it.”

“And what are you planning on doing?” Steve asks, “Where is he?”

“We don’t know yet, he won’t say.” Jane explains, “Once we know, we save him.”

Steve feels the dread settle in his stomach. These girls, this is what they have been doing, trying to track Billy that is Gods-knows-where, and going to look for him, them against an army of spies and crazy scientists. And he knows there might be nothing in the world he can say to stop them.

“It’s dangerous,” Steve starts.

“Don’t try to talk me out of this, Steve.” Max says. When she gets that determined look in her eye she looks so much like Billy, Steve forgets they are not related. “Lucas and the others don’t know.”

“Why?”

“They wouldn’t understand,” Max explains, “They don’t really like Billy and they all think…” Max sighs and covers her face with one of her hands. “Billy was hurt for a long time by his…by Neil. And my mom didn’t do anything, and I didn’t say anything because I was afraid he would do it to me if I spoke up.”

It hits Steve like a slap across the face.

And yet, he feels like he always knew deep down. He had seen the bruises in the showers too many times, shaped like a shoe on his back, a big black bruise across his stomach like a blanket, his split lip and black eyes. There were only so many times he could boost to Tommy about the fight he had picked up.

There weren’t that many people to fight in Hawkins, Indiana.

And then something else pops into his head. It happened in his dream a couple of weeks ago.

_“It wasn’t you I wanted to hurt.”_

Suddenly, he feels like he can’t breathe. He grabs Jane by her wrist and pulls her close.

“He found me,” he says, and she nods in response. “That was real. That was him?”

“He is lonely,” Jane explains, “And he doesn’t know how to find who he wants very well yet.”

Steve nods, he can’t make himself speak. He gets up stumbling over his own feet, thinking how it must be late and he needs to pick up the boys from the Arcade. But before the door closes behind him, he hears Max.

“If he finds you again,” she says, her tone slightly threatening “be nice to him, asshole.”

*

“You know.”

Is the first thing Billy says the next time they meet. Steve wishes he could stablish some sort of pattern to know when this will happen and prepare himself. When he turns around to look, Billy doesn’t look as bad as he did the last time. He is still skinnier than Steve remembers but he is standing up straight and even with his shaved head and the yellowing bruise on the side of his eye, he still looks as daring as he did that night at the Byers walking out of his Camaro.

It’s a statement, not a question. Steve thinks about lying but he thinks, Billy would know. He seems to know a lot more than he is letting on these days. Steve isn’t sure what he is referring to, he knows this is not a dream, he also knows Billy was beaten by his father his whole life and he also knows he has been speaking with Jane. He knows his relationship with Max was a lot more than either of them made it seem.

“Yeah, I know.” He answers lamely. “You’re alive. How are you alive?”

Billy shrugs, “Fuck me if I know.”

“Where are you?”

“Even if I wanted to tell you,” Billy answers, “I don’t know. I’m in a room all the time and when they take me it’s to…to pump me full of drugs or try and make me snap.”

Steve doesn’t know if it’s a joke or not.

“Guess nothing ever stays dead in Hawkins, pretty boy.” Billy says and smiles mockingly.

“Max is looking for you,” Steve says after a moment. “Jane too. They won’t stop until they find you.”

“I won’t let them find me then,”

“I don’t know if that will work,” Steve explains “Jane is…”

Billy smirks and it’s infuriating.

“I know.” He says, and then he steps forward and pulls on one of the buttons of Steve’s shirt, ripping it off. Steve is about to protest when suddenly, Billy lets go of the button and it does not fall.

It stays floating in the air between them.

“What?” Steve whispers in utter disbelief. After everything he has seen, everything he has experienced he should not be so surprised. And yet.

Billy’s eyes sparkle with an excitement. He smiles in that way he used to, pressing his tongue against his teeth.

“They keep pumping me full of drugs and trying to make me, into this I guess.”

 _They will use you._ Steve wants to say desperately but he feels like Billy knows this as well. _They will force your hand and when you don’t obey they will keep torturing you._

“But they also electroshock me, and it keeps making me forget things.” Billy says with blunt honesty. “I feel like my brains are scrambled eggs somedays.” Then he adds, “I’m cold all the time.”

“Do you…” Steve feels on edge as if he is treading on dangerous ground. “What can I do?”

The buttons falls down suddenly.

“Max doesn’t want to leave you alone,” Steve continues, “She feels guilty about…about you getting hurt.”

“This is not…” Billy starts.

“Before. About you getting hurt before.”

Steve feels as if an invisible force pushes him across a large distance and he closes his eyes and braces for the impact, but it never comes. When he opens his eyes he is back in his room, the soft rays of light are coming in through the curtains.

When he looks down at this shirt, it’s missing a button.

*

“Where’s your head?” Robin asks one afternoon at the Family Video store.

Steve doesn’t answer for a couple of seconds and something hits the back of his head. When he turns around Robin is sticking out her tongue.

“I’m just tired,” he says leaning back onto the counter. _I haven’t been sleeping well because an undead Billy keeps showing up from who knows where and confusing me._ He thinks but doesn’t add.

“Just tell me Steve,” Robin says after a while of silence, “I don’t want to do all this dancing of trying to get you to tell me and you being weird about it.”

“What if- “Steve starts.

“Oh here it comes,” she sighs dramatically but she is smiling as she drops on the chair.

“I keep having these dreams,” he lowers his voice. “About Billy.”

“Oh,” she says and her face twists into something uncomfortable. “Are you about to confess about having a gay revelation dreaming of a dead boy?”

“What? No – “ Steve stutters, “No! What would you think that?”

“Well I saw how you looked at- “

“That is crazy! And wrong!” Steve interrupts. “I just was going to say – I think,” he sighs exasperated. “Never mind, pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“I’ll be here when you want to confess,” she says with a wink.

*

The problem is, Robin put it into his head.

And Steve can’t close his eyes for a second because he is not ready to face Billy. Not with these ridiculous thoughts going through his head when there is a more serious situation going on. He is being tortured for fucks’ sake!

So Steve takes the whole party to his place, and gives them all the sugar he can find to keep them awake. He puts on movie after movie but around 4 a.m. the kids crash around the tv. And Steve tries to pinch himself awake but his eyelids feel heavy and he almost feels a pull…

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Is the first thing he hears a second later.

“Jesus Christ man!” He exclaims and jumps, his back collides with Billy’s chest, and he is so cold, it penetrates his skin through the clothes. Billy’s hands catch him by the forearms and Steve thinks he can almost feel the electricity.

“I’m sorry I pushed you out the last time,” Billy says and he gently let go of Steve.

“You could have been gentler, my head hurt for three days after.”

“Sorry ‘bout that too.” He says smiling sheepishly “I’m still getting the hang of this whole…mind stuff.”

Steve nods and draws a shaky breath. It’s the first time he notices the floor is some sort of watery substance. He leans down on his knees a bit trying to calm his pulse.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Billy says leaning down to level eyes with him. His eyes are so blue, like the photo in a postcard from a California beach. “I don’t want to do that anymore.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says letting out a shaky breath and slowly opening his eyes, “I’m sorry I left you to die in a burning car. I’m really sorry, just putting that out there.”

Billy smiles but he looks so sad Steve wants to cry. He can feel something so strong floating around them, an emotion so deep. It scares him.

“I wished I had…” Billy says wistfully, “God I have wished to die so many times,” Steve feels his stomach turn, “And yet now I only want to be alive and out of this place.”

“Why did you want to be dead?”

“I didn’t want to…I just assumed I would.” Billy lets himself fall onto the watery floor and scratches his neck, looking anywhere but Steve. “The first time I thought I was going to die, I was 10.”

Steve swallows but tries not to speak.

“My dad got so mad at me, I don’t even remember why. It was before Max and Susan…” Billy is speaking in such a low tone Steve has to focus to make out the words, “My mom had just left, and he pushed me down the stairs…I was lying on the ground, my leg was broken. And he came on top of me and kept hitting me…”

Billy sighs as if the memory is hard to recall.

“I had to skip school for two weeks, my leg never healed right and on cold days is unbearable.”

“That’s why you always lean on your left leg during basketball?” Steve whispers, Billy has given him something, so Steve will confess something else in exchange. He watched Billy a lot, he noticed things.

“That’s right pretty boy,” and then Billy’s head snaps up, alarmed as if he is hearing something. “I have to go now, but I have to ask for a favor.”

“Anything,” Steve says and finds he is surprised he truly means it.

“Please tell Max I’m sorry, I know I said so before. But it wasn’t her fault we ended up in Hawkins, none of this is her fault.”

Billy closes his eyes for one second and the last thing Steve sees before he is lightly pushed back is the trickle of blood coming out of his nose. When Steve looks back up again, he is in his living room.

Max is sitting besides him, staring at him.

“You were making weird noises,” she says in a low tone to not wake the others, “Did you see him?”

Steve feels exhausted, and it makes sense, it’s not like he’s been sleeping. He’s been in some space time glitch talking to Billy, not resting at all.

“He said he was sorry,” Steve repeats, “That it was not your fault you ended up in Hawkins,”

Max eyes’ shine with something he can’t quite make out.

“What does that mean?” Steve asks after a second.

“When I met Billy, we really did get along. He was the one that taught me to skate,” she explains, “We used to go by the beach every weekend and we were just…. happy I guess.”

Steve sees Jane moving slightly, she’s awake and she comes near to listen what they are speaking about.

“When Billy started growing up he began ditching me for his friends,” Max says, “I didn’t understand….one day we were going to the movies and he stood me up. I was so angry Steve, but I didn’t know…I didn’t know I swear,”

Her eyes are shinning with tears now, Steve can make them out with the soft lights of the street that come through the window.

“When Neil and my mom got home I told him, Billy kept ditching me for his stupid friend, except Neil didn’t know that, he thought Billy kept hanging out with me because that’s what he had been telling him for weeks.”

Max looks down at her feet and the next time she speaks her voice is shaky.

“I went to bed and Neil left to go find him and when I woke up, my mom was in my room and Billy was screaming in the living room…. I kept hearing thumping noises and yells. And when I told my mom we had to do something she said, ´It’s none of our business’” There are tears running down Max’s face now. “He was at the hospital for a month after that. Billy told everyone he had been mugged, but he knew. He knew I had told.”

Steve leans forward and hugs her as Jane sits up and puts her hand over Max’s.

“It wasn’t your fault Max,” he says, “You couldn’t have known.”

How could a little girl angry at her big brother ever know his dad would do something like that? How could Max’s mother be such a coward? Now suddenly everything he knew made sense. How Billy jumped whenever someone touched him from behind, how he hated sitting with his back to the door, the constant bruising and all the fights he wanted to pick.

The words echoed around his head again _I just assumed I would._

“I didn’t know, I swear,” Max keeps repeating as she cries.

“Bad man did that,” Jane says, “Not you.” And she pointedly looks at Steve. “I told you Billy was good.”

Steve nods, and holds Max a bit closer.

*

“So imagine you find out somethings about someone you did not expect.” Steve tells Robin the next day at work. “Like a lot of things that make other things make sense.”

“I’m lost,” she says “What is this about?”

“Let’s say you thought someone was an asshole,” Steve starts without wanting to go too far into technicalities. “Like an irredeemable piece of shit.”

“That’s harsh,” she says.

“But you were wrong, you were so wrong. You don’t even know…” Steve considers, “Well maybe you were a little right but mostly wrong.”

Robin nods enthralled by his dilemma.

“But now this person…. moved away,” Steve says “And you only could speak on the phone. How would you apologize?”

“Well that depends,” Robin says while trying to hold back her laughter, “Do I like this person?”

“I mean they are ok – “

“No I mean – do you have feelings for them?” Robin smiles wider “Why are we speaking in gender neutral terms?”

“Shut up,” he says, “You are not helping me at all. You know having a successful love-life has really ruined you for friendship.”

Robin laughs harder, “Steve I know you insists on hanging around middle schoolers,” she says “But be a grown up for once. Apologize.”

“I don’t want to be a grown up,” Steve mutters using his baby voice.

Robin throws a straw at this hair and hits it.

*

When Steve goes to the Byers’ to pick Dustin up, his heart almost gives out.

The Camaro is parked by the entrance. The hood is up and someone is moving under it. Steve gets out of his car on shaky feet and walks a couple of steps. Could it be? No, no that’s impossible. And yet he finds his heart stops it’s beating for a second, if that’s even possible, at the thought of Billy coming out from under the hood, shirt half open and cherise cat smile with his tongue pressed against his teeth, golden curls moving in the wind.

A second later, Max comes running towards him and Jonathan steps out from behind the car.

“What is this?” He asks, Max crashes into him, grabs him by the lapels of his coat.

“He wants to sell Billy’s car,” Max says, “Neil said he was going to sell it because he wanted nothing of Billy’s and I got so angry I just, I got so angry I ran off with it.”

“It needs some fixing,” Jonathan says, “She almost totals the engine,”

“Do you even know anything about cars?” Steve asked and Jonathan shrugs, “Billy will kill you.” Jonathan looks confused at that and Max widens her eyes in alarm, “Would, I meant would. If he was alive and here – which he is not. Because he is dead.” He concludes lamely.

Jonathan looks at him even more confused. “Jesus, his little sister is right here Steve. I wasn’t a fan of the guy either but no need to be so brash,” and with that he turns around and walks back into the house.

“Don’t say anything,” Max whispers “Or I’ll kill you.”

Sometimes she reminds him so much of Billy, he can’t think straight.

Joyce calls her from inside house and she runs back following Jonathan’s trail.

Steve walks a couple of steps towards the car and without noticing what he is doing he opens the driver door and gets inside. The car smells like cigarette and Billy’s aftershave, Steve knows because he used to put it on after showering at school and Tommy always complained about how strong it was.

He moves his hands across the dashboard and the wheel, the traces of Billy are everywhere. Steve feels a pain goes past his chest and leans forward to open the glovebox. A couple of papers tumble out to the floor and Steve’s pick them up.

He goes through them, thinking how he is intruding in something that is not his, but he can’t help himself. He wants to know more.

There are some pictures, one of them is of a blonde woman, she is standing by the beach, her messy blonde hair blowing in every direction. She is smiling wide and she looks so much like Billy. It must be his mother. She is beautiful yes, but Steve can’t help to resent her a bit.

He doesn’t dwell on it and moves to the next, it’s a string of pictures from a photobooth. Billy and Max stare back at him, looking much younger, they are laughing and pulling funny faces. Max has ice cream on her face and they both look very tan.

The next piece of paper is a postcard, and when Steve turns it the back just says, _“Hope is forever, A – 1984.”_ It’s from the year before they came to Hawkins. He is curious but he sets it aside.

The last thing he finds is an envelope and when he opens it he nearly gasps. It’s an acceptance letter with a full scholarship for UCLA.

And suddenly a splotch of water hits the paper, Steve moves it out of the way as he feels more tears pouring out of his eyes. He feels so helpless. Billy was getting out. He had a life planned, he was going back to California, he was going to live out and be happy.

Steve feels like he can’t breathe.

He wraps his fingers around the wheel trying to focus on getting air in and out and tries not to think of Billy somewhere, cold and beaten and electrocuted.

*

When Billy wakes up, he is back on the cold metal bed.

Straps are holding down his arms and legs and there’s a syringe going into his arm. He feels the familiar places were the metal that discharges the electroshock is touching him. Besides him, only stands the old man with the British accent.

“William,” He says sounding pleased. “You know I wanted to give you your time to come out of your shell. But you have been hiding some things from us.”

He lifts his hand and opens his palms slowly. In the middle of it sits a button.

“Now I know this is not yours,” The man says, “So there’s something going on when you are in your room that you won’t tell us about.”

“Fuck you,” Billy says, his voice rough.

“Tsk,” the man continues, “Rest assured, I will find out William. But in the meantime, you still have to learn some things.”

Billy wants to laugh. If this man thinks he is going to break his will or make him bend. Well he doesn’t know Billy at all.

The man nods and Billy feels and electric shock go through his body. Billy closes his eyes and tries to focus on the push, like Jane’s calls it.

When he opens them again the board they use to make the discharges is indented in a wall across the room. The man is smiling as if he has just made a break through.

“Oh wonderful,” he says, “William see I knew,” and a second later Billy has pushed him across the room as well.

“Well,” the man says while he stands up, he looks shocked. Billy wants to laugh. “Still seems you need to be trained. Like any good dog should.”

And then, someone sticks a syringe in his neck – it hurts so bad for a second - and his eyes close.

*

Steve is anxious.

The last couple of days he has been waiting, waiting and waiting for Billy to come find him. Or whatever it is that he does. But there has been nothing but silence. He goes in and out of dreamless sleep. When he sought out Jane to see if she had seen Billy recently, she had been secretive and avoided his questioning and then he had to shut up because the rest of the party had arrived.

His anxiety is preventing him from sleeping, which seems to be counterproductive as that is the only state Billy can reach him. He paces around his room and sighs dramatically over and over while throwing himself on the bed in different positions.

Finally, after what seems like hours he falls asleep.

It seems like he really is dreaming this time. When he opens his eyes, he is walking down a boardwalk by the beach. The sun is shinning high in the sky and people are laughing and running around. He can see the beach a couple of feet away, kids running around the sand and into the ocean.

He walks a couple of steps towards the ocean, letting the warmth of the afternoon wash over him, when he sees him. Billy is standing by the edge of the shore, where the waves break. His feet are getting soaked and buried in the sand and he has his eyes closed, hands in his pockets.

His jeans are rolled up to his ankles, and he is not wearing a shirt, blonde curls swaying softly in the wind. He has no bruises on his face of his body, no tension in the line of his shoulders.

He looks like a vision.

Steve approaches him, almost scared to disturb him.

“Is this a dream?” he asks when he reaches Billy.

“No,” Billy says and opens his eyes, they look even bluer if possible. “I just thought I’d do something nice for ya,”

Steve looks around, looking at the detail of everything. He feels the heat of the sun tickling his skin.

“You are doing this? How?”

“I’m getting better at this mind stuff,” he explains. “And I figured you were getting tired of seeing me all bruised and beat up.”

 _It’s an illusion,_ Steve thinks.

“Is this a real place?” He asks, looking around.

“Santa Monica,” says Billy nodding. “I loved the beach so much,”

“You’ll see it again,” Steve says, because he wants to promise something, anything.

“But I won’t be the same,” Billy says “You know Heraclitus, right? “ _In the same river we both step and do not step, we are and are not"_

“I guess I see why you got into UCLA,” Steve jokes and then he realizes what he said.

But Billy just laughs.

“You’ve been going through my stuff, pretty boy?” He sees and stares at the seagulls flying by, trying to catch fish close to the surface.

“You will go,” Steve says, “Maybe I’ll even come with you.”

“To California?” Billy asks, surprised.

“Yeah,” Steve takes another step closer this time, feeling how the small waves crash against him. “Yeah I would go with you. We could get a place near campus, and I’d get a job.”

Billy turns to look at him, a funny glint in his eye. And Steve can’t shut up.

“And we could come to the beach every weekend, and just stay here all day.” When Steve takes another step, there is no more space between them. He is staring directly into Billy’s eyes and it feels like he is looking directly at the sun. There is so much raw feeling behind them, Steve feels like there is barely air to breathe.

“And what would we do?” Billy asks, “How would we pass the time?”

“Together,” Steve says and leans forward.

Billy leans down at the same time and their lips meet. And is like – everything makes sense at once. Billy’s lips feel chapped and rough, and Steve knows that under the illusion, he is kissing the real Billy.

Billy wraps his arms around Steve’s middle and lifts him up, as the waves keep splashing them. He laughs into the kiss, laughs like a little kid in a way that makes his eyes crinkle and his nose scrunch. And Steve feels, he feels hopeless and so fucking in love it hurts.

Is a painful glimpse of what could have been. The life they could have had. _The life they can still have,_ a voice inside Steve’s head says.

When they pull apart, Billy is laughing, and he says,

“If you were mine, pretty boy, I would kiss you every day.”

Steve heart breaks a little.

“You will,” Steve says, “I promise, I will come and get you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.” Billy says.

And just like that the illusion ends. The birds and the people laughing fade away and Steve stops feeling the sand under his feet and the ocean crashing against them. When he looks again, Billy is standing in front him, wearing the same all white outfit, with a shaved head and a bruised body, and a trickle of blood coming out of his nose.

“Jesus Christ, I don’t want you to hurt yourself trying to make up fantasy worlds,” He moves forward and grabs Billy’s face between his hands again. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“I really wish you wouldn’t come here Steve,” Billy mutters again. “Or bring my sister to this place, these people are dangerous.”

“If you think I can keep your sister from doing anything, you are stupider than I thought.”

Billy laughs. And suddenly he looks alarmed again.

“I have to go,” he says quickly, and he pulls back, but Steve pulls him in again and kisses him, hard.

When he opens his eyes, he is sitting in his bed and his lips are tingling. He still feels the heat of the California sun on his cheeks.

And the entire party is standing at the edge of his bed, staring at him.

*

“Dude, this is so not cool!” Dustin says, he looks angrier than he is. “I can’t believe the three of you kept this from us for months!”

“It was dangerous,” Max explains, “I had to protect him, if anyone suspects we knew he was alive.”

“It’s ok,” says Lucas, smiling and grabbing her hand. “I get it.”

“Well I don’t,” says Mike side-eying Jane. “Friends don’t lie.”

“It wasn’t a lie,” Jane says, “Just a secret.”

“Why did you tell them now?” Steve asks. He is still feels in a daze.

“Found him,” Jane says and she grabs a piece of paper from her backpack, then proceeds to spread it open. It’s a map of the United States, and she points to Wyoming. “But they are taking him somewhere new, next week.”

“We have to go,” Max says “We have to get him now”

“We don’t even have a plan,” Mike says “Are we supposed to just walk in there and ask them to hand him over? How are we sure it’s him? Maybe this is a trap!”

“It’s too dangerous,” Dustin says nodding along.

Max gets up suddenly, facing them down. “Listen shitbirds, you can either come with me or don’t, I’m going either way. I’m saving my brother.”

They all keep quiet for a moment, startled by the sudden outburst.

“I’m going too.” Says Jane, smiling.

Steve clears his throat and looks around the room.

“I’m going too,” and he tries to ignore Dustin’s shock “But we should probably tell Jonathan and Nancy.”


	2. Part II.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this became a hybrid between san junipero and the winter soldier and it also became so much longer than i originally planned for. unbetaed so sorry about that too!

Telling Nancy and Jonathan goes…better than Steve was expecting

“So you are saying,” Nancy says in that tone, that Steve _just knows_ “That Billy is alive. Has been alive and experimented on. By Russians. And you knew this whole time, because he can reach out to you…in dreams.”

“It’s not my dreams,” Steve says, “It’s…a place.”

“Steve, I want to believe I do. But you do know how this whole thing sounds?”

“It’s true,” Jane says, “Billy is alive. Sometimes we talk.”

Nancy bites her lip and looks between them, conflicted. Jonathan looks less torn up about it. He just looks at Max and nods.

“I’ll go with you.”

Nancy looks at him, her eyebrows moving up an down in surprise.

“I know what is like for your brother to go missing and everyone tell you he is dead. I believe you, I think it’s worth a shot.”

Nancy sighs and worries her lip once again, staring at Max.

“Why does it have to be now? We need a little more time to set up a plan.”

“There is no time,” Max all but screams “They are moving next week and we need to find him before. If they move him we’ll never find him! What if they take him out of the country?”

“We can work in the plan on the way there,” Steve says while grabbing Max by the shoulders and pulling her to sit down again. “I like improvising.”

He does not.

“Improvising? With Russian spies?” Nancy says, flabbergasted.

“Sure,” Steve continues ironically. “Always want to try something new.”

“We can’t take all the kids,” Jonathan adds, “Just Jane and Max,”

Steve agrees. First of all it would be weird explaining to their parents why they need to drive their kids out of the state. Second, he can’t babysit and save Billy at the same time. Also Steve is really nervous, like really. He has been trying not to say anything because explaining to Billy’s little sister that he and her brother made out in a fake California beach in the void and kind of have feelings for each other would be weird as hell.

But he is having a breakdown. Just silently.

“How will you explain this to – Neil?” Steve finally asks looking at Max.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says sharply and then her eyes turn to look at Nancy even if when she speaks she is talking to all of them. “If any of you think about hurting my brother,”

“We don’t know what state he is in,” Nancy says “He could be dangerous.”

“He has been possessed and he died. He has been captured and tortured,” Max continues as if she has not heard her. “I won’t let you put him as if he was a rabid dog.” No one dares interrupt her. “He asked for my help once and I promised we would help him, and then we all left him to die…”

Steve looks down at the carpet, trying to focus on something else than his guilt.

“No hurting Billy,” Jane says. “If he tries to hurt you, I’ll help.”

They all nod but no one dares say something else.

*

Billy has known fear for most of his life.

When you are a kid and your dad hits you, well fear is usually the closest companion. Fear of messing up, fear of making him angry, fear of threading wrongly over that slim line that keeps the monster away from your father. When he was a kid, fear was something he didn’t know how to handle.

But he had grown up and he had understood like everything else, fear was a weapon. If people feared you, they kept their distance. If people feared you, they didn’t look for too long or cared too much about what happened to you.

Fear was a weapon Billy had learned to wield. He was rarely scared anymore, it was hard for something to phase him.

That is why, when he wakes up in a different sort of cage, he doesn’t think anything of it. The walls are pristine white and when he looks up he sees a group of doctors staring at him. The British man is standing at the front.

A couple of minutes go by, and that is when he hears a noise behind him.

A metal sound of a door being pushed open and then closed again. And when he turns around slowly, he nearly falls over. There is a creature standing on the other side of the room, it is standing on it’s four legs, with black shiny skin but it has no eyes.

The creature hisses and Billy watches as its mouth opens like a flower, different sets of teeth aligned in each petal.

Billy feels his hand tremble.

It charges at him at once, opening and closing its mouth and he is so startled that it catches his arm with the edge of one of its line of teeth. He turns around to run faster, but suddenly he realizes there is nowhere to hide.

This is a test, he realizes. He either fights or dies.

And for the first time in a long time he feels terrified. Billy had learned how to handle Neil with the years. He knew when a punch was coming and when it was going to be an open hand slap. He knew when it was just one squeeze of his arm and when the violence was going to last some hours.

He has known how to read his enemy for years. This is new, uncharted territory.

But he is also not the same person who had to walk on eggshells around his own father.

With the determination, Billy turns around and stares it down. He closes his eyes for a minute and focuses on the push. He hears a loud thumping noise and that thing, whatever it is, cries out like a wounded animal.

He opens his eyes again and sees it crawling, with less strength towards him still. And he remembers what Jane had said, _“Sometimes using your hands help. To focus the push.”_ He slowly lifts his arms, he knows his hands are trembling and his forearm is bleeding where it bit him, and he _shoves._

There is another cracking sound and he feels the familiar trickle of blood falling from his nose.

When he looks back up at the glass, the British man is clapping while he smiles creepily.

*

Steve has always thought himself a pacifist.

There was that episode with Jonathan one time but that was a one off. He is no good at fighting, he never has been.

That is why he never pictured himself in the situation he is right now. He was only driving to the Byers house to pick some book Dustin had forgotten. But when he is pulling up he hears two voices, speaking loudly. He recognizes one of them as Max but he doesn’t know who the other is.

He parks his car and when he gets out, he sees it. It’s Neil Hargrove.

He is pulling Max by her arm, grabbing her so hard Steve can see the white skin around where he is gripping. And he is saying something while he points as Billy’s Camaro that is still park in the driveway.

“You can’t sell his car!” Max yells, her face is as red as her hair. “It’s not yours to decide on!”

“Maxine, Billy is dead and I get to decide what is done to whatever shit he left behind!” Neil yells louder.

“You don’t have any right! You never cared for him except for when you beat him like a dog!” Max maneuvers and breaks loose of the hold Neil has around her arm, taking a couple of steps back.

“What did you just say to me, girl?”

Steve pops the trunk of his car open and grabs his bat. Monsters need to be warned off with weapons built for them.

“Hey!” Steve says loudly as he walks towards them, bat in full display. Max looks relieved when she sees him. “Is there a problem here?”

Neil looks at him up and down for a few seconds, as if he is thinking through weather to hit him or speak to him. Finally his eyes fall on the bat.

“Who are you?” He simply asks, his voice full of distrust.

“A friend of Billy’s.” Is the first thing of Steve’s mouth before he can think. “I think you should leave.”

“I will leave, boy.” Says Neil, now looking something between anger and disgust. “But not without this piece of shit.” He says kicking the side of the Camaro.

And it just so typical with everything he has learned about this man in the last weeks. So typical he wouldn’t even respect Billy’s memory while he thinks him dead. Steve can’t help it, he sees white spots of pure anger.

“Hey!” He yells and he raises the bat over his shoulder. “Do not touch his car! Get the fuck out of here!”

Neil laughs in a way that is completely mocking and Steve wants nothing more than to smash the nails against his head.

“Are you going to take on me with that ridiculous thing?” he says “Maxine we are leaving.”

“No!” Steve exclaims again, “You are not taking her and you are not taking the car! You need to leave, now.”

Neil takes another step forward and Max widens her eyes in surprise. Steve knows his hands must be shaking by now, he has never used this bat in another human being, and he is not very how the outcome is going to work out for all of them but he can’t back down now.

He feels so helpless. His mind can’t help wandering back to how Billy must have felt all those times before. _He was nine years old the first time this happened,_ he wants to break down and cry.

And then they all jump back when they hear a gunshot.

Joyce Byers is standing on the side of her house, she is holding a gun that looks suspiciously like Hopper’s, pointing to the sky. And she looks angry.

“Get the fuck out of my property,” she says looking directly at Neil Hargrove, no trembling in her voice.

“I will ma’am,” Neil says, now he sounds sort of nervous, “I just need to take – “

“Didn’t you hear me?” Joyce says putting her finger over the trigger again. “Get out!”

Neil scrambles off, walking towards the truck that is parked further ahead by the road. It is only when they hear the engine start that Steve lets out the breath he was holding. Max runs towards Joyce, throwing her arms around her middle.

*

Steve’s been sleeping a lot these days.

There are moments where he truly, falls into deep slumber and rests and there are also the moments when his eyes are closed but he is in some other place, with Billy. That night, when he goes to bed, he has a feeling he won’t be sleeping at all.

And when he closes his eyes, he opens them again and he is standing in the middle of a clearing. It could be Hawkins, but it also could be anywhere else. The grass is tall around him and it sways softly with the wind.

The clearing is surrounded by tall forest trees, but Steve doesn’t feel scared. The moon is high in the sky, and the stars shine so bright, he can see everything.

He can even see Billy lying in the middle of the clearing, staring up at the sky. He must be creating some sort of illusion again because his hair is long and he is dressed as if it were any regular day in Hawkins. Steve approaches him slowly but Billy’s eyes don’t move from the skyline, not even as he sits down beside him.

“Hey you,” he finally says, and Billy smiles almost imperceptibly.

When he moves, Steve sees a white bandage wrapped around his forearm.

“What happened?” he says, confused but Billy sits up and leans forward, resting his forehead against Steve’s, does not answer. “Hey, are you ok?”

“I killed…something,” he finally says. “They made me fight it and it got me there.”

Steve feels his blood run cold. Every time Billy references something about what they are doing to him, he feels so helpless he wants to cry. And still, he needs to make himself hear it.

“I’m coming to get you.” Steve whispers and traces with his index the outline of the bandage.

“I wish you’d just give up.” Billy says smiling sadly. “I wish you wouldn’t come here. This isn’t a good place.”

“I know it isn’t.” Steve agrees, “That is why I have to get you out of there.”

Billy stays quiet for a long while after that, his forehead still leaning against Steve’s. When he closes his eyes, he can hear anything everything around him, the soft sound of the leaves moving in the wind. The cricketing coming from everywhere.

There is so much peace in this place.

“Sometimes when I come out of…here,” says Billy, whispering, “I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember anything at all.”

His breath hitches for a moment and then he goes on.

“It takes me hours before I remember Jane…and you. And sometimes I’m so angry I just want to…” He does not finish the sentence. “What if you come here to get me and I hurt you? Or Jane? Or Max?”

Steve feels like he could cry at this. But he can’t. He can’t put more on Billy that he is already carrying already.

“I can’t promise you that you won’t.” He starts, “But it won’t be your fault, Billy. What they’ve done to you…”

Billy opens his eyes to look at him and he looks _so small_. “They have turned me on what I always was Steve.”

“No,” Steve insists and leans forward to grab Billy’s face between his hands. “If you forget, I will make you remember,” he says willing his voice not to tremble. “I promise.”

Billy’s eyes are wet, but no tears fall, and it is only this close in the dark that Steve can’t see the dark circles under them. He looks so tired, so impossibly tired. Steve thinks waiting even a day to go and get him it’s too long.

“I killed that thing so easy Steve,” He whispers, “I only had to…just push with my mind and it was twisting on the floor, all of its bones broken.” He explains. “I’m terrified of using it wrong or…”

“You won’t.” Steve says.

“I’ve hurt you before.” Billy insists, looking at him through his eyelashes.

“I’ve hurt you before too,” Steve says, “But we are different people now. Not as angry at the same things.”

“I was never angry at you,” Billy explains smiling, “I just…directed my anger at the wrong places I think.” There is something else, but Steve doesn’t dare push.

He can’t stop thinking, unconsciously making a list in his head of all the things about Billy that make the palm of his hands sweat and his heart push against his ribcage as if trying to get out. How he pushes his tongue against his teeth when he smiles, the constellation of freckles that stretches out over his nose, how he leans forward and speaks in a low tone when he is saying something true. How he cares for his sister, how much he has silently endured.

His sincere smile when he had pulled away from that kiss.

It makes Steve fills silly, to be thinking of all these things, to be mooning over a boy when he should be worrying over more important things. But his first experience at love had ended abruptly when things we had no controlled over had disrupted all their lives. He barely had any time to live out the silliness and craziness of teenage love. He had been forced to grow up and to let Nancy go.

And it had been for the best, really.

It was just, sometimes he felt like he had missed out on something.

That was when he realized what he was wishing for. He selfishly wanted a little more time, he wanted to stay here with Billy, suspended in time and space, while everything went on around them, they were somewhere else falling in love.

It’s almost romantic, Steve thinks. How Billy built this whole world for them.

“I’m not…” Billy speaks breaking the silence, “I’m not who I was before Steve. Not even close.”

“Neither am I.” says Steve. “I look back and I don’t even know who that person was.”

Billy huffs, between annoyed and frustrated and runs his finger through the hair Steve knows is not really there. He wishes Billy didn’t feel the need to hide behind illusions around him, but he respects the need.

“The other day they were taking me to get more shots of whatever…and I caught sight of my reflection in the glass of the door.” He says, “My chest is covered in scars, and so are my arms.”

Steve’s seen them the first few times, the different white lines crossing against his skin, a reminder.

“I have no hair,” Billy continues and slowly the imagery he is projecting from his brain fades away, Steve sees the buzzed hair, fighting to grow. “I’ve lost so much weight, sometimes I don’t even have strength to move. I’m bruised all over.”

He leans forward, resting his hands against the palms of his hands. Every single fake physical attribute fades and Steve can see, in the light of the moonlight Billy has created for him, how the scars on his arm are followed by yellow and blue bruises. There is a trail of blood coming down from the palm of his hand that Steve’s suspects comes from his nose.

Steve doesn’t know what to say. There are no words that can make the horror better, and he understands this is beyond vanity. Everyone that has come into Billy’s life has taken something from him, that is why he so violently holds on to the little he had left.

The wind stops for a sudden moment and Steve leans forward, grabbing Billy’s wrist between his fingers and he presses.

“Your bones,” he says slowly, “Your bones are still the same.”

Neither of them speak but Billy leans his forehead back against Steve’s, and presses a kiss against his lips. The skin is chapped and Steve can taste the metallic flavor of blood, Billy’s skin smells like sanitizer and soap, and ethylic alcohol.

“I don’t want to forget this,” Billy whispers pulling apart and he opens his eyes, watching Steve intently. All the illusion of the clearing and the forest begins to fall away as if he means to concentrate only in memorizing everything about him. “But some days I wake up and my brains feel like…like someone has gone in there and put things…”

Steve holds his gaze, as difficult as it is.

“Sometimes it takes me hours to know what is real and what is not. What thoughts are mine and which…” he sighs, “If you come here, we won’t have hours for me to figure out. What if I hurt you?”

Billy’s hand falls between their entwined legs, the black space around them stretches endlessly.

“I will be with Jane,” Steve says “If you get confused or try to hurt any of us she will help.” Billy doesn’t seem convinced, but Steve continues, “Hargrove, all these people you’ve hurt or things you’ve killed or what the fuck ever. It was them or you, ok? Whatever you have done to them they probably deserved it anyway.”

“You don’t get it,” Billy says but there is no malice in his tone, “They’ve made me into something, I don’t even know. I don’t know what I can do and I can’t control it.” And Steve can hear the words he does not say but hang in the air between them _Maybe it’s best if you leave me here._

“We’ll figure it out.” He says and then he adds. “I am not leaving you in that place.”

Billy laughs and then Steve feels a gentle shove. He opens his eyes and he is sitting in his room back in Hawkins.

Without dwelling too much on it, he goes into the bathroom and shaves his hair off.

*

“What happened to your hair?”

Is the first thing Nancy says when he opens the door the next morning. He was hoping for a little more caution but he can tell it’s the sheer surprise that makes her speak before she can even think. Jonathan elbows her on the side and she blushes.

“Man, that looks awful!”

Steve flips Dustin off and walks towards the car to drop his bag. Max had insisted they take the Camaro, she thought Billy would be comforted by seeing something familiar and his. Steve was not so sure he would be comforted by the thought of them driving his precious car two states over, but there was no arguing with Max these days.

“Steve are you sure you are ok?” Nancy insists as she walks besides him towards the car. She sounds so concerned that he wants to laugh.

“It’s just hair Nance,” he says “It’ll grow back.”

The rest of the kids had been between angry and annoyed when they announced they couldn’t go with them to Wyoming, but they had relaxed a bit when Steve had said they could stay at his place with Joyce since his parents would be gone for a month.

Joyce had been reluctant to let Jane go with them but after whatever talk the two of them had she had given in. Steve was not even sure what Max had told her mom and Neil, and he thought it was better for him not to dig too deep in there.

He slides into the driver’s seat and Max and Jane get in the back, Nancy and Jonathan have decided to take Jonathan’s car just in case. Steve waves the kids goodbye, trying not to think too much that this might be the last time he sees them.

He knows none of them want to talk too much about it but they are walking into something that could be a trap. And even if it wasn’t there’s still no guarantee a group of kids would be able to overtake trained doctors and spies, or whatever those people were.

None of it would change his mind, though. He had meant what he said to Billy every time, he would not abandon him. Not again at least.

As soon as they hit the road, Max is out like a light.

It makes Steve wonders if she has been sleeping at all these past months. She has been looking tired and jumpy, but everyone around them had assumed it was the grieving process. Now, that she finally knows she is on her way to find her brother she seems relaxed and almost peaceful.

Jane is still awake, her curious brown eyes looking everywhere out the window.

After an hour of so of silence she leans forward, resting her elbows on the seat to look at Steve. She just observes him and does not speak at all.

“What, kid?” Steve says after some minutes, “I know it’s weird.”

“I think it’s bitchin’” She says smiling. “Everyone should have love. Like Mike.”

Steve thinks is a good testament to his own control how he does not drive off the road.

“Sorry?” He manages as he grips the wheel tighter.

“Sometimes when people love they do stupid things,” Jane continues unphased. “Like calling through a radio every night for 353 days, or like shaving your hair.”

“It’s just hair,” Steve repeats. “It’ll grow back.”

Jane nods knowingly and leans back onto the seat, smiling.

*

They spend the night in some motel that is on the side of the road, Nancy rooms with the girls and Steve and Jonathan go together. Steve is thankful, he is not in the mood to be grilled by Nancy’s incessant questioning as much as he likes her.

But, just his luck, Jonathan has been spending way too much with his girlfriend or has been sent on a mission by her and tries to question him just the same.

“So,” he starts when it’s already dark and they are both lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. “Seeing you with no hair is definitely weird.”

“Did Nancy put you up to this?” Steve asks annoyed.

He is nervous now, he isn’t sure if Billy is going to be on the other side when he closes his eyes and he feels like maybe he fucked up and made too big of a gesture, dove in too fast and is going to end up looking stupid. The words Jane said in the car are still rolling around his brain, heavy like marbles.

“No, I just thought we should chat a bit.” Jonathan says, “I mean I just think this whole thing is weird. Like you and Hargrove, meeting somewhere in the void constantly…. I guess I’m just curious.”

“You are always curious,” Steve says hiding his face behind his pillow. “I think I like him.”

Jonathan stays silent for a bit.

“Like you want to be his friend now?” He says slowly, “Well good, I mean the guy had been trying for fucking ever to get you to notice him, guess he only had to die for it.”

Steve doesn’t laugh.

“No I think,” he says muffling the sounds of his own voice with the pillow, “I think I like him the way you like Nancy.”

“Oh.” Is all Jonathan says.

A few minutes go by and Steve can’t stand the silence anymore, he throws the pillow off the bed and sits up but Jonathan is still lying down, staring at the ceiling.

“What does that mean? Are you grossed out? Are you just not going to speak to me anymore? Do you want me to-“

“Stop,” Jonathan laughs and for a second, Steve’s heart falls back into his chest. “I’m not disgusted or anything dude, it’s none of my business what you do. I’m just surprised…. I thought you both hated each other and then ignored each other. Though I could tell he was…well he was pulling your metaphorical pigtails for a long time.”

“What?” Steve asks confused, “Wait why are you being so chill about this?”

“Do you want me to act like an asshole and break your nose again?” Jonathan teases and Steve is reminded on why he was so quick to forgive him once. Jonathan is nice. He is easy to talk to. “I think my brother…Will,” Jonathan says with caution, “I think he might be like you too. And if he someday decides to tell me, I want to make him feel alright about it.”

“Will?” Steve asks confused.

“Yeah, man. You are still you I don’t care what you like.” Jonathan says, and he turns to look at Steve and smiles. “So, is that why you shaved your head? Are you having a crisis?”

“No,” Steve says unsure, “I just…wherever he is, they keep shaving his head. And I can tell he feels awful about it, so I just thought,”

“You thought?” Jonathan presses.

“Just to show him it’s not big deal. Hair grows back.”

“That’s cool.”

They don’t talk anymore after that, but Steve feels at peace now. He stops tossing and turning in bed and when he hears Jonathan’s breathing slow down he closes his eyes, letting himself be pulled under.

There is no dreaming and no void that night.

*

Steve buys a hat when they stop in Omaha because he is cold, so sue him. Jane says it looks cool and Max just rolls her eyes, but he can tell she is trying not to laugh. They are at some diner while Jonathan gets gas and Jane is going through her second plate of waffles. Max is standing by the Camaro, “ _making sure Jonathan doesn’t fuck it up_ ” as she had put it.

Nancy is just staring at him, as if with the sole force of her eyeballs she will get him to say something.

“What, Nance?” He asks after some time, when he grows tired of looking out the window and pretending he doesn’t notice.

“I’m just worried about you Steve,” she says, “We used to talk.”

“Used to do tons of things,” he says, and he immediately regrets it. “I’m sorry, Nance. I’m just tired and like…well this isn’t my ideal road trip.”

“If you don’t want to do this…”

“I want to do this,” he says almost too loud making the waitress turn around to look at them. “I’m just nervous.”

“Steve loves Billy.” Jane explains with a mouthful of waffles and Steve chokes on his coffee. “It gives him the squirrel.”

Nancy widens her eyes in surprise, but she looks back at Jane and says, “The squirrel?”

Jane nods, “Sometimes when I see Mike, I get this feeling in my chest. Real fast. Like a squirrel.”

Steve looks at her for a moment and wants to smile, the childish occurrence reminds him just how young she is.

But then, Nancy clears her throat and says, “Is that how you feel about Billy?”

“I don’t…” Steve starts but he decides is better not to lie. What is the point anyway? “We’ve been spending a lot of time together lately. And it’s just…I just feel like maybe I do.”

A couple of seconds go by and Nancy leans forward, her hand covering Steve’s. When he looks at her, her eyes are confused but kind. It makes Steve want to cry but he knows they don’t have the time for that.

He wants to tell her he is terrified, scared to death of this brand new thing that feels too good to be truth. Scares what would happen if it lasts and what if it doesn’t. What if he loses Billy before he even gets a chance to have him at all, outside of the dreams they make up together. But there is no point. There is nothing Nancy or anyone can do to help him on that regard.

“I think it’s nice.” She says finally. “That you have someone.”

Steve nods and tries not to put too much thought into it. He knows something else is coming, he knows Nancy well enough to know when there is a something hidden behind her tone.

“I just want you to be careful Steve,” she whispers, “You know he was dangerous before but now he is…different.”

“Like me.” Jane adds, nodding seriously.

Nancy looks at her, concerned. “I didn’t mean…just he is really angry I guess. He was before.”

“Nance just leave it.” Steve finally interrupts putting her out of her misery. “Let’s just not talk about this ever.”

She looks over at him and he knows, that is not an option. But she lets it go for now, and turns around when she hears the bell of the door chime and Jonathan and Max running into the dinner. Jonathan drops in the seat besides her and Max pushes Jane a bit and grabs a piece of her waffle.

“We were thinking,” Nancy says, because now her and Jonathan think in sync, “That I’ll drive our car and Jonathan will drive the Camaro so you can catch some sleep in the backseat. Max and Jane can ride with me.”

He wants to argue but the truth is he is so tired he doesn’t trust himself to continue driving two kids across the country. He nods and secures his beanie around his head to protect his ears. Max protests and insists she will ride with Jonathan in the Camaro.

As soon as Steve lays on the back seat he feels himself drifting away.

*

All the days seem the same to Billy.

He doesn’t actually know when it’s day and when is night, he just knows when they shove the tray of oatmeal and coffee through the box in the door and when they walk into his room either to stick a syringe in him or drag him to another room to fight or to be tied down and electrocuted until he screams.

Sometimes he spends so many hours trying to reconstruct memories, but barely nothing comes back. He remembers Max’s red hair blowing in the California wind, remembers an arcade by the beach and playing with her until she ran off angry but not really. Sometimes he remembers Neil and his hateful hands and Susan and her indifference.

Most days, he remembers Steve’s kind brown eyes.

He isn’t sure when he is sleeping and when he is in that place where he can go to be with someone else. He remembers Jane and her fierceness and her childish innocence. He tries not to remember how Steve is in there, almost too soft and loving.

It’s better if he pretends is all a dream, so when nothing comes of it, it won’t hurt as much.

And yet when he closes his eyes all he wants to do is reach for him. Step one line across the black void place and find Steve and build him a fantasy as if they were just two teenagers lost in some town in the Midwest with nothing better to do but spend time with each other.

After the latest fight, they take him back to his punishment cell and they close the door. The dark is so thick it almost seems like he does not need to close his eyes to reach out for Steve. And yet he still does. He can’t help himself, it’s such a simple pleasure. The only one he is allowed now.

When he opens his eyes, he is in the void, surrounded by nothing but black matter. He starts imagining a road at night, long and empty, open for anyone running away. He recalls how it felt on the nights when Neil’s worst got the best of him, to run off in the Camaro and imagine he never turned back.

He imagines trees at the side of the road and stars shinning high in the sky. And then in the distance he sees someone walking towards him. But he is not scared.

Steve walks towards him, not really knowing what he is walking to and Billy wants to laugh. As he comes closer, he almost does.

“What happened to your hair, pretty boy?” Billy says and he comes to a stop.

Harrington shrugs and smiles slowly, taking a few more steps forward towards him. Before Billy can speak, Steve grabs him by the lapels of his leather jacket and pulls him forward, into a kiss.

It’s different this time. Steve is more confident, surer. He pulls Billy forward into him with purpose and for a second, he feels like the center of his mind is staring right in front of him. All the sound of the road and the countryside falls away, Billy can feel it fading by the edges as if he is letting go of it.

Steve pulls back, laughing and resting his forehead against Billy’s.

“It’s just hair,” he says, “Jane told me I looked bitchin’”

Billy’s eyes trace his face, as if searching for something.

“We look the same now, pretty boy.” He finally says, and Steve can tell he gets it. It’s enough for him. “We can grow it out together.”

“Max found your Farrah Fawcett hair spray.” Steve jokes, his fingers still playing with the lapels of Billy’s jacket.

It feels like a scene out of another life. Laughing and joking and kissing, as if they had never left Hawkins and at some point they had met at a party, inside a dark closet, in the garden or somewhere else.

Something that could have happened if they had been braver.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” Billy says and Steve knows he is not just talking about the walking distance between them when he had opened his eyes. “I had given up on you already.”

Steve perks up at that, and he remembers Jonathan’s words _‘He was pulling your metaphorical pigtails’_

“How long have you been waiting?” Steve asks without thinking, he regrets being so blunt but the words are already out of his mouth, floating between them.

“Ages,” Billy says “Since I saw you across that parking lot.”

And Steve feels his stomach drop.

Once again, like it has before when Billy or someone else has revealed something about him, he feels everything click into place for one second. Billy pushing him in every practice, following him into the showers, constantly trying to strike up a fight, a conversation, anything with him.

He realizes he was too busy at the time to read into it but now he knows his action were saying something else.

“I’m the one who should be saying sorry then,” he says after a while, Billy’s arm still holding him in place against his chest. “It took me forever.”

“S’okay I was an asshole about it anyway,” Billy laughs and it rumbles under Steve’s ear. “And now you’ve gone and shaved your head for me, pretty boy. Talk about a gesture.”

“It’s nothing,” Steve says trying to hide his blush. “It’ll grow back.”

Billy laughs and a second later, Steve jumps awake in the backseat of the Camaro.

*

That night, they are stopped in a gas station in Casper, in the border of Wyoming. Jane is sleeping inside the car and Nancy and Jonathan, are standing outside speaking in hushed voices.

Steve is sitting across from Max at the bar, she is munching on an egg salad sandwich when she starts to question him.

“So what do you talk about with my brother?” she says, a couple of crumbs falling onto the table.

Steve nearly spits out his coffee. “Nothing, just…things.”

Max narrows her eyes, distrustful.

“What things? You used to not get along from the last I remember.”

He fiddles with his cup and moves his eyes across the station, hoping to come up with something to distract Max but she doesn’t budge. And Steve is so tired, he doesn’t even have the strength to keep avoiding things anymore.

“We have changed.” He offers, “He is less angry now. Or at least less angry at me.”

Max nods, “I don’t think he was angry at you or me. He was just angry and shit at handling it.”

Steve nods, he agrees at some point but he also feels like he is no place to judge how someone dealt with the kind of abuse Billy had been subject to.

“But you shaved your hair for him,” Max continues, eyeing him up and down, “Kind of reminds me when Lucas says he doesn’t want to play anymore just so I will accept all of his coins at the arcade.”

“Maybe it’s kind of like that.”

She smiles and for a moment she looks like the young girl she is. And then she looks Steve directly in the eye and says,

“If you hurt my brother, I will castrate you with your own bat.”

Steve laughs and he believes her.

*

They arrive in Sheridan, Wyoming the next day.

The sun is high up in the sky and Steve grabs Billy’s sunglasses from the Camaro’s glovebox. They slide down his nose and he keeps having to push them back but they feel like a safety blanket.

Jane says this is where he is.

It’s a small town with low houses and miles and miles of countryside going to all sides. The mountains are beautiful, but they sort of look like prison walls to Steve, he tries not to think too much of it.

Nancy says is better to leave out the cars hidden behind some trees but the edge of the road, it might attract attention in such a small town. The kind of attention they don’t need to have on them to do what they are about to do.

They spread out the map Max had over the hood of the Camaro and Jane opens the notebook she carries in her backpack, and read a few lines, before closing her eyes. They all remain in silence as she covers her eyes with a blindfold.

After a couple of minutes, she removes the blindfold and nods at Nancy.

“We have to go through the sewage,” says Nancy, “It’s the only way we can go in undetected.”

Steve wants to say some lame joke about swimming through shit, but he knows they have swam through worst things in the upside down so really, there is no point in complaining. Max ties her hair in a bun and grabs a pencil to trace the map.

“I think we can go through here, when night falls the countryside will be really dark.” She says and Jonathan nods.

They grab the clothes they had taken in the trunk to be comfortable and move fast through the sewage pipes. There’s an entrance, a sewer in an alleyway that they walk towards quietly after eight p.m.

Jane goes in last and closes the lid behind her.

*

There are lights outside.

Billy can make out the flashlights that bounce off the walls and filter through the space under the door. He has his hands held on the wall that faces the outside, trying to sense whatever is that is going on out there. All he noticed is that someone screamed and then the light under his door went out.

He feels alert, almost on edge, the feeling of electricity under his skin like when he is about to start a fight, or he knew a storm was coming.

The door flies open and suddenly a group of soldiers come in, grabbing him by the forearms and drag him out of the room. His eyes are still growing accustomed to the darkness and when he takes a step forward his feet fail him.

He hears a whisper and a scream and suddenly all the lights are on again.

It’s like looking directly into the sun, after so much time of seeing light after short periods of time, it blinds him so suddenly. He stumbles backwards, covering his eyes with his hands and drags a couple of the soldiers that surround him down with him.

The floor is cold, he feels the cold seeping through the thin cloth of his hospital like pants. The colors around him look dull almost subdued. He has no idea where he is or what is happening. He tries to grasp at anything, but all memories in his mind seem to be far away as if the images are trapped beyond a wall, somewhere he can’t reach.

And then he sees her.

Running down the hall, he hears the sneakers against the tiles. Then he sees the fiery red hair, it is so contrasting with the white walls, he thinks that if he wasn’t down on the floor he would fall back.

“Billy!” she yells, and _he knows her._

He remembers the sound of her laugh when milkshake came out of his nose and her shy eyes when he had first met her, hiding behind her mother. He remembers her calling him asshole and holding a bat over him and her understanding silence.

“Billy!” she yells again and one of the soldier’s steps forward, with intention to hurt her.

“No!” Billy yells and he barely lifts his hand.

He can’t let them hurt her, but he doesn’t know why yet. He intends only to push the man away but a second later, all the soldiers between them fall to the floor.

 _They are dead,_ he realizes after a moment, _I killed them._

“Billy!” she says and throws herself into his arms.

He barely catches her; her arms go around his neck and he can feel the hot tears falling against his skin. He wraps his arm around her tiny figure, feeling how frail she is, her heart is beating out of control, so much he can feel the thump-thump against his own chest.

“I’m so sorry,” she keeps saying while she sobs, “I’m so sorry Billy.”

He feels the familiar trickle of blood coming out of his nose and then spots three people running around the corner. One of them is a girl holding a rifle, she looks around at the bodies of the Russian soldiers, looking between slightly terrified and impressed.

The other two guys look confused, until one of them looks up at him, his huge brown eyes make something inside Billy snap.

“Max?” he whispers to the girl in his arms. And then he looks back to the doe eyed stranger. “Harrington?”

He sees white spots mixing with the lights and then all he sees is black.


	3. Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you everyone who left nice comments and kudos ♡ i was going to split the last part into more, but i made it fit so this is the last. hope you've enjoyed it!

Billy wakes up to the sound of screaming inside his head.

He is dreaming about death, his own. He is in the middle of the court and there is so much blood coming out of his stomach, it feels like something is cutting him in half pushing his guts out and replacing them with something else. Someone screams but it feels far away and almost subsided. His throat feels raw and he thinks, maybe it’s just him that is screaming.

When he opens his eyes the first thing he sees is the white ceiling, there are some spots of humidity darkening the old paint. His head feels like it’s being split open and he feels the caked blood on his face. He sits up slowly, still feeling the phantom pain from the dream in his stomach.

The bed he is lying in is hard, the cover is itchy. There is a glass of water waiting on the bedside table and a white pill sitting besides it. There’s no much else in the room, only a window with the curtains drawn. He hears voices outside and steps walking towards the room.

He crawls back to the corner of the bed and hears fumbling with the door.

A second later, Max walks in and jumps on the bed.

“You are awake,” she says but she keeps her distance, giving him space. “Are you ok?”

Billy’s eyes look her over for a moment, searching for wounds or anywhere where she might be hurt.

“Head hurts.” He says, and his voice feels raw, throat dry.

“Steve left some Advil for you there,” she says pointing at the bedside table. “There are some clothes in the bathroom if you want to shower.”

He nods and pushes off the bed, he wants nothing more to get out of this rigid hospital like clothes he is in and to wash off the sweat off his skin. His legs feel wobbly and he still sees white at the edges of his vision.

The shower is nice, he can’t remember the last time he felt hot water against his skin. When he walks out, feeling clean and smelling like soap he feels a little more human. The thought flies out of his head as soon as the steam in the mirror clears and he sees his own face. His hair is slightly grown but it’s just a fuzz of blonde. He sees the white uneven skin of the scars that come from the center of his chest and spread over his body and arms.

He can’t stand to look for very long.

There is a grey sweatshirt and some jeans waiting for him on the counter. The clothes feel weird against his skin, too soft compared to the rigid and cold cloth of the ones he is used to. The sweatshirt smells like fabric softener and something else. He finishes slipping on the sneakers Max left behind for him, he doesn’t even bother looking in the mirror, feels like this is not like him at all.

But then again does he even know what is?

When he comes out of the bathroom Max is still sitting on the bed, flipping through a tour guide that she must have pulled from the drawer of the bedside table.

“Where are we?” he asks but she does not lift her eyes.

“Somewhere in Wichita,” she says “Nancy thought it’d be best to take a longer way home in case anyone is following us.”

Billy lets the words roll around his head for a bit.

“Is everyone…did everyone make it? What happened?”

Max lifts her eyes to study him for a moment. “You don’t remember?”

He walks towards the unmade bed and lets his body drop besides her. She puts the map aside and turns her body towards him, doesn’t try touch him at all, and he is thankful for that, but he feels her concern.

“I don’t remember much of…anything.” Billy explains, “It feels like someone has been playing with my brain. I think…. they put a lot of shit in me. And maybe took some out too, I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to know Billy,” she says and her hands hover over his covered forearm for a second before she gently touches him. “It’s ok if you don’t remember.”

He nods and worries his lip between his teeth, he doesn’t know what to say. He is not certain this isn’t a dream and he is not back in that cold dark cell, somewhere he doesn’t know. He tries not to dwell on the thought too much and it’s interrupted by the churning of his own stomach.

“They are waiting for us to go to breakfast,” Max says and jumps from the bed “We can get pancakes,”

“I’m not sure if…” Billy starts and doesn’t know how to continue. He is not sure he should go outside or even be in contact with people. He remembers things he did, things he thinks he could do with his mind and he is terrified they might be true. “I don’t know if I should go outside.”

“It’s ok,” Max says knowingly “I can take you if anything happens, you know this.”

_I don’t think a bat with nails can stop me now,_ but his stomach churns again and all he can think of is how hungry he is and how he wants some food that doesn’t look or taste like vomit.

So he lets himself be dragged from the room, when Max opens the door the sunlight is almost too bright, his eyes hurt a bit but she hands over his old pair of Ray bans and he takes them silently.

The motel is on the side of the road and there doesn’t look like there is anything else around for miles, just open road and countryside. He follows Max towards the small dinner that hides under the stairs. Sitting around a table are Wheeler and Byers with Harrington and…Jane.

He thinks this is the first time he has seen her since he saved her and yet she seems so familiar, as if they know each other. Her eyes are kind when she looks at him. She gets up and runs towards him, throwing her arms around her torso.

“Billy!” she exclaims, and she sounds happy to see him. “Come, I have eggos!” she says and grabs him by the wrist towards the table.

Wheeler, Byers and Harrington hushed voices stop as soon as he sits down. He tries to ignore it for a couple of minutes but the three of them stare at him as if he is an animal at the zoo. He looks up defiant and says,

“What? I’m not going to snap and break all of your spines if that’s what you are worried about.”

“Billy!” Max exclaims and punches him on the shoulder. “Just stop staring you guys, it’s rude.”

Byers and Harrington have the decency to look embarrassed and move their eyes but Wheeler is still staring at him.

“I find that hard to believe with the spectacle we got the last time we saw you conscious.” She says, her voice is firm but Billy can tell she’s nervous. “We have no idea what you are capable of.”

“Nance, stop…” murmurs Harrington but it’s too late. Billy feels the white-hot anger climbing up his spine and twisting into his spine.

“Exactly,” he says in a low voice, “So I would advise avoid pissing me off.”

“Billy” Jane says putting her hand over his. She then looks at Nancy for a second and removes her hand.

“I’ll take my car and get out of your hair then.” Billy says but Max grabs his wrist before he can move.

“You can’t do that,” she says a little desperate. “Billy they will still be looking for you. And if you are alone, it’s going to be dangerous. We need to go back to Hawkins and…”

“I don’t want to go back there,” he says almost mechanically. But the truth is he doesn’t even know where he wants to go.

He has no money, no clothes, nothing. He is not even very sure of who he is or where he could go. His mind feels like it’s buzzing constantly on edge of breaking. Maybe he does need a couple of days to rest.

“Please,” Max says in a low voice and squeezes his hand. “Just to lay low for a couple of days.”

He studies her from behind her sunglasses and nods. Almost everyone at the table sags in visible relief and it almost makes him want to laugh. But a second later Max slides over her plate of waffles and all is forgotten.

It’s only when he is going through his third plate and his fourth cup of coffee that he notices all eyes on the table are back on him. He knows he is acting like a caveman, but he is so hungry, it almost feel as if he has forgotten the taste of food and now he can’t get enough.

“Steve you can drive with me and Billy in the Camaro,” says Max after a moment.

“I go with you,” Jane says nodding along and Billy almost smiles at her.

*

The way back is long, much longer than the first part of the trip.

The road stretches, long, unchanging in front of Steve’s eyes, it makes him long for sleep. He is so tired, his body is exhausted and he thinks his mind is close to giving out, so he tries to focus on the lights of Nancy’s car in front of him and not fall asleep at the wheel.

Billy is no state to drive, at least he has been reasonable enough to accept it, so he sits next to Steve in complete silence while Jane and Max sleep in the back. Steve wants to say something, but he doesn’t know where to start. Billy doesn’t remember anything, that much is obvious.

And Steve wants to keep his promise, he wants to make him remember, but he doesn’t know how. He wants to make jokes only the two of them know but the problem is Billy won’t remember them now. Maybe ever. He wants to reach out and run his fingers against the side of Billy’s hand but he is afraid that will end in a car accident.

Instead he wraps his fingers around the stick shift.

“What is it Harrington?” Billy says after a while, breaking the silence that hanged heavy between them. “I can hear the gears in your head twisting from here.”

Right. Because Billy, he is like Jane now. He can perceive beyond what he can see. Suddenly Steve feels nervous, exposed.

“Nothing,” he says lamely, “I’m tired, it’s been a long couple of days,”

“Well I didn’t ask you to come get me,” Billy says and his tone is so typical, Steve feels like they are back in Hawkins at basketball practice. “It was really dumb of you to bring two kids in there.”

“If you think I could have left them behind you don’t know them at all.” Steve says, “You saved Jane’s life before, she wanted to return the favor. And Max’s been… she missed you a lot.”

There is no response for a couple of seconds.

“Where am I going to stay in Hawkins? I can’t go back to my place,”

Steve hears the edge in his tone, but he knows he has no right to. This Billy has no confessed anything to him, and as much as he wants to promise his dad will never hurt him again, it’s not his place.

“Well you can either stay with me,” he says casually “my parents won’t be home for a couple of weeks, or you an go to…Chief Hopper’s cabin in the woods. Is where El-Jane stayed when she couldn’t be seen.”

“I can’t be seen?” He asks.

“Well everyone in Hawkins thinks you died,” Steve says “And I think someone coming back from the dead would definitely raise some flags. Also, the people that had you before will probably be looking for you…”

“I can stay with you, for a while.” Billy says and leans back on the seat. “I don’t want to be alone.”

He suddenly looks so small, Steve can’t think of what to say.

*

When they get back to Hawkins, they fall into an easy routine.

At first, Steve doesn’t know how to be around Billy. He knew how to handle him before, keeping him on the edge and not feeding into his anger, but Billy is different now. He is quieter, though he seems to be as angry as ever.

Steve is more understanding now, at least he tries to be.

Their routine goes like this: He works all afternoon and when he gets home sometimes dinner is done, sometimes it is not. The days when it is they eat silently in front of the tv watching some dumb show, the days when it isn’t Steve usually finds Billy asleep on the couch with a book cradled between his hands.

He doesn’t like those days. Those days give him bad ideas.

Like now, he’s been staring at Billy’s sleeping face for a while, feeling especially self-destructive. It’s evident Billy does not sleep at night, though Steve isn’t sure what is it that he does. He only seems to be able to sleep in the living room, while all the lights are on.

It’s the rarest sight to see Billy with his defenses down, mouth slack and eyelids wavering. His body stops listening to his brain somewhere in between staring and he leans forward to grab the book from Billy’s hand so he can get more comfortable.

_Not my fault_ , Steve thinks while he peers down at Billy’s sleeping face. Being within the vicinity of him shuts down his brain and renders his nerves useless. Steve doesn’t even remember feeling this way around Nancy.

Billy jerks awake, like he senses the nervous energy Steve is exuding, looks around as if he is on a daze, and yawns behind a hand. His eyes flick over to Steve, looking him over with crocked eyebrows in slight confusion and annoyance.

“Dinner?” He says after a couple of seconds.

And suddenly he loses balance and falls on the couch, it takes him one or two seconds to notice Billy has pulled him down by the arm. The book falls to the floor with a soft thud against the carpet.

“Jane came by today,” Billy says.

Jane has been coming by with Max and the rest of the kids. At first it was just the two girls but the last couple of days the boys grew tired of being left behind and got over their fear of Billy. Steve thought it was ridiculous to be scared, even if he had almost beaten his skull in once, specially right now when Billy looked like an oversized teddy bear wearing a huge jumper and some sweats.

He is so different these days. It’s not that Steve knew him before but still even his mannerism seem different. Ever since they got back in Hawkins he has been wearing huge clothes and sleeping in rooms where all the lights are on.

His hair is growing slowly but there are some short blonde ringlets falling over his forehead and when he leans closer, Steve can make out the freckles that go across his nose and onto his cheeks.

“I found out this cool thing I can do,” he continues “Wanna see?”

Steve nods and tries not to look to excited. It’s obvious Billy doesn’t like being stared at and prodded to do tricks like some circus animal. But this is a good thing, him getting excited over something. It’s a weird sight these days.

Billy lifts his open palm and presses it against Steve hand and when he moves it, there is a butterfly sitting at the center of it. It’s beautiful and big, its yellow wind splash out over the entire length of Steve’s palm. It flutters it’s wings and slowly flies towards the ceiling. When it touches the light, it disappears.

“Cool, right?” Billy says and Steve nods still staring at the place where the butterfly disappeared.

*

It takes long enough to happen but happen it does.

Steve figures he hasn’t been having issues with his night terrors due to the tiredness their little road trip had left him with. He felt exhausted for weeks after and even more on edge by having Billy there, silent all the time, unable to make him feel better.

He likes to fix things. He likes to make people feel better, but he is starting to understand there isn’t a simple way to go about someone being brought back from the dead and turned into a weapon.

There’s also everything he doesn’t remember, everything that happened in that place between sleep and awake where they met for months. Every memory is etched painfully onto Steve’s mind, but it appears Billy does not know about it at all.

He tries not to dwell too much.

That night he falls asleep faster than usual and it feels like a million hours go by before he wakes up screaming, a familiar constriction in his chest, and a feeling of breathlessness. He sits up in bed and reaches for his bat when his hand is grabbed by another.

It scares him even more, he almost jumps off the bed but then the person leans forward, and Steve can make out with the moonlight that seeps through the curtain, Billy’s blue eyes.

“Harrington,” he says but his voice sounds far away and strange, Steve still can’t breathe. “Steve, it’s me.”

His eyes start to focus better in the dark and he feels his heartbeat slowing down, but he still feels like he can’t get air into his lungs. He leans forward, heaving and Billy lifts Steve’s hand and sets it against his chest.

The fabric of the sweatshirt is soft under his fingertips and he tries to focus on the steady sound of Billy’s heartbeat under his fingertips, tries to copy his breathing.

“What – what are you doing here?” He manages to get out a couple of minutes after mimicking his breathing. “Are you okay?”

“I heard you screaming,” Billy explains, and leans forward into the light filtering through the window. “Are you okay?”

“Just a nightmare,” Steve explains, embarrassed. “You can go back to your bed.”

Billy stares at him for a couple of seconds, still pressing Steve’s hand to his covered chest. When he looks at Steve like that, it makes him feel like he can see right through him. It makes him so nervous, he tries not to think of it too much.

“You get nightmares often?” he says nodding towards the familiar shadow of the bat that is lying next to Steve’s bed, against the wall. It’s like a security blanket.

Steve nods, not trusting his voice to speak.

“What about?”

He feels how his hands start barely twitching under Billy’s. The nervousness that comes every time someone asks about his deep-rooted trauma.

“Just…you know. Mind flayer and all it brought with it.” Steve offers lamely, “Fighting whatever is it that comes. But I’m not good enough and someone always gets hurt or dies.”

Billy sighs, and he lets go of Steve hand. A second later he shoves him a bit, lying by his side on the bed. Their arms barely touching.

“I think they made me kill something like that while I was in Wyoming.” Billy says, “That’s how I knew, I think what I had to do to kill all those people after.”

Steve knows what he is referring to. He can still see all the bodies of the Russian soldiers falling to the floor in sync if he closes his eyes.

“That wasn’t…” Steve starts but then regrets his choice of words, “You saved our lives. You know there was no other way for us to get out of there.”

“Yeah,” Billy says “I still killed them though,”

They stay quiet for a couple of minutes and with the courage the dark gives him, Steve reaches out and slides his hand into Billy’s. Fingers slotting against fingers. His skin is warm, the heat seeping from his skin and into Steve’s.

“I think we were on a beach once,” Billy finally says breaking the silence. Steve almost jumps at the surprise of it all but wills himself still to not interrupt him. “I was by the seaside and you came by, your cheeks were red from the sun and you kissed me.”

“I was there,” Steve answers “Except neither of us were really there. It was an illusion you created for us. Like the butterfly.”

There is no answer for a couple of minutes and Steve thinks Billy is about to pull back, that he has blown this but then,

“But you did kiss me, I didn’t create that part.”

Steve laughs and it feels genuine for the first time in ages. He squeezes Billy’s hand slightly but keeps his eyes on the ceiling, scared to move and break the spell.

“Yeah I did kiss you.” Steve says “You kissed me on the side of a road somewhere too.”

The silence between them no longer feels heavy or loaded. It’s comfortable and suddenly Steve feels like he can say anything. He turns his head slightly to look at Billy’s silhouette, to stare at the line of his chest as it rises and fall.

“I found you,” Billy finally says, it sounds like the words are difficult to pronounce but he is making an effort. “Of all the people in the world, when I searched in whatever way I could I found you.” And then he slightly turns his head to look into Steve’s eyes. “Did you ever wonder why?”

It feels like all the words he wanted to say a minute ago are caught in his throat. There is an intensity behind Billy’s eyes that make his hand sweat.

“I’m guessing the same reason I kissed you on some beach in California,” Steve finally says and his voice sounds so small and shaky he feels embarrassed.

He could be wrong, after all he is just making out things in the dark but he could swear the corner of Billy’s mouth slightly curved upwards.

“This is nice,” Billy whispers almost to himself, Steve squeezes his hand in response. He leans on his side and lets his other hand trace a line up Billy’s arm. Even under the sweatshirt, Steve can trace the uneven skin the scars have left behind.

Billy shivers under the contact, his eyes fall shut and Steve tries to go slow, tries not to rattle him. He slides his hand down and presses his thumb against the bone jutting from his wrist.

The room smells like clean laundry and cigarettes and like Billy now. Billy sleeping on his bed and on his pillow, all tangled into his sheets, all tangled around him, and he is thinking he is kind of stupid. He thinks that heavy pressure on his chest is probably trying to tell him something.

“We could go to that beach someday,” Steve says after a while. “You said it was Santa Monica,”

_We could drive there,_ Steve wants to say, _we could go far away from all the monsters and torture, go somewhere where awful fathers and absent mothers could not reach us. Where none of this mattered anymore. Somewhere so warm, the sun seeped into our skin even at night and we would never feel the cold of the monsters hidden in Hawkins again._

Instead he doesn’t say anything, because he knows Billy is meant to be dead and there are people searching for him and they don’t even know what they are going to do or how they are going to handle everything. And Billy is also broken and doesn’t remember much and can throw people across rooms with his mind and snap their necks.

“You can sleep if you want,” Billy says, “I’ll stay here.”

Steve maneuvers to turn on the bedside lamp and pretends he doesn’t catch the thankful glimpse of a smile on Billy’s face before he closes his eyes.

*

They don’t speak about it, but ever since the first time, they sleep in the same bed.

Steve doesn’t press the issue. He wants to talk about it but he knows they can’t, at least not yet. So he slips into his room and when he wakes up in the middle of a night terror, Billy is small in his bed, curled on himself.

“I wonder how long you’ll put up with me.” Billy says, his voice is quiet, like he is trying to be strong but failing. Steve knows the feeling too well to confuse it with something else.

“I wish you wouldn’t waste time thinking about things that won’t happen,” Steve replies, moving to press his hand against Billy’s shoulder.

*

“So when are you going to finally tell me what’s going on dingus?” says Robin the next day as soon as Steve walks through the door.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Steve answers and tries to avoid her knowing eyes.

“I mean about the undead boy you have been keeping at your place and you are half in love with.” Robin says without lifting her eyes from the magazine she’s flipping through. “Dustin filled me in.”

_Traitor_.

“I am not half in love with anyone, don’t be ridiculous,” is all Steve says but he knows it doesn’t sound even a little convincing.

Robin sighs dramatically and sets her magazine aside and pops her bubblegum. She has her hair pulled back in a weird bun that makes her look younger than she really is.

“I covered for you the whole weekend while you went to rescue your zombie,” Robin says “And now you can’t even admit your undying love for him to me? You are a poor excuse of a man Steve Harrington.”

Steve flips her off. “I will not comment,” he says and turns his attention on fixing stuff around the counter.

“You are making my head hurt with your lying,” she says popping her gum again, “So when can I meet him?”

He sighs and pretend to ignore her until she starts moving around the things he keeps trying to tidy up. Honestly, she’s worse than Dustin.

“You already know him,” he says “You saw him, dead.”

“Well yeah but Dustin says he is all different now,” she says in a low tone, “And I fear he might be losing his mind just listening to you all day.”

“You can come over, if you behave.”

She presses her palm against her own chest and opens her mouth in feigned shock. “You wound me,” she says but she smiles and winks.

Steve thinks Billy will like her.

*

That night, when Steve comes home with Robin, all the furniture in the living room is levitating one inch above the ground.

“O-hkay,” she says as soon as she closes the door behind them.

Billy is sitting on the couch, huddled in a jacket and scarf, bunching his shoulder up, tucking his nose into the worn cloth. When he hears her voice, everything falls simultaneously to the floor with a thud and he turns around, eyes wide in surprise.

“This is Robin,” Steve says nodding towards her, “Robin this is…Hargrove.”

Robin rolls her eyes and takes a step forward, letting herself drop onto the couch. Billy almost flinches and moves almost imperceptibly to the left, he doesn’t like being near people much these days.

But if Robin notices, she acts like nothing happened, sticking her legs up the couch and says,

“So how was the road trip? I hear Steve is an awful driver.”

Billy almost smiles at this.

Steve rolls his eyes and walks towards the kitchen, the noise of Robin speaking and Billy giving monosyllabic answers still going in the background.

He orders a pizza and the three of them sit around the tv, Robin fills the silence and Steve plays along. Billy seems comfortable, more comfortable Steve has seen him in ages. It’s almost as if he is back to being a normal teenager for a while.

When Steve walks Robin out, her girlfriend is waiting outside on her motorcycle, she turns around before leaving and says,

“He seems…like he is changed.”

And he wants to say so much. Wants to tell her that they all have, that he has too. That half of the time Billy was gone he felt like he was missing a limb but he can’t even make sense of it in his head so he just answers quietly,

“He has.” Steve looks at the ground, pressing his feet against the dirt and waits for the other shoe to drop. “But?”

“How long do you think he’ll have to stay?” Robin says, she sounds curious.

“I don’t know,” Steve shrugs, focusing his eyes on his hands. Robin straightens out and waits for him to speak again. “He is scared and I’m not going to force him to recover. The last thing I need is for him to be scared.”

“Especially since you’re in love with him.” Robin’s tone isn’t questioning. Steve can feel his heart stutter, his cheeks aflame.

“Especially that,” he answers and bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling. There is no point on playing dumb anymore, not when Robin can read him so easily.

Robin’s eyes soften around the edges and she laughs as she steps forward and hugs him and he feels a breath escape him that feels like it’s been trapped for far too long.

He walks back into the house, slowly dragging his feet and when he opens the door he hears running water in the kitchen. He tips toes slowly and finds Billy doing the dishes, the sleeves of his sweatshirt pulled up, Steve can see the white uneven lines of the scars going up and down his arms. He is humming under his breath while he does it, a melody Steve thinks he knows but doesn’t recognize.

When he steps closer into Billy’s space and sits on the counter, a silent question on whether or not he is allowed to stay and see this. On whether he is allowed to touch him. Billy’s eyes look darker now, like a sky ready for a storm, but there are no tears.

Billy drops the plate in the sink and fold his wet hand into Steve’s open one. The sky roars outside and all Steve can see is their joint fingers. He looks back up and notices the longer curl falling onto Billy’s forehead. He notices how his lips are impossibly red.

Steve surges against his restraint and kisses him.

Their chests meet and all he can feel is the steady thump of Billy’s heart, warm and alive under his hand. The storm breaks outside, the rain falls steadily against the glass of the windows while they keep on kissing, Billy’s hands pressing him close to his body. He tastes like pizza and cigarettes and something else he can’t make out.

*

Jane seems determined on helping Billy figure out how to handle whatever is it that they put into his mind.

Steve is watching from the kitchen, how she goads him to push her around the garden. It’s cold outside and Billy is wearing at least 4 layers of coats. Under his hat, Steve can see the red tip of his ears.

“She likes him.”

He looks up and finds Nancy has left her place in the couch to join him by the window.

“I think she sees herself in him, weirdly enough.” Steve says.

He wants to say more. Wants to talk about how Billy never stops shaking when they go to bed, curling so tightly into his body that Steve thinks they are becoming one. He wants to say all these things to Nancy, to someone, but he can’t figure out the words yet. It feels wrong, like it’s something private, something he isn’t supposed to speak of.

His eyes go back to Billy and Jane running through the garden, laughing like two children. He thinks he understands better now, how Nancy felt back then when she called him bullshit. How angry it makes him to know they can’t go back to being two simple teenagers but at the same time he isn’t sure those two people would have gotten this far.

“I think he’s good for you,” Nancy says, and she smiles a bit. Genuine, like before.

*

Billy asks him that night, with the bedside light on.

“Can I ask you something?” he starts while he runs his finger up the spine of the book he is reading.

Steve is lying down, his eyes closed but Billy can tell he’s awake. He can always tell.

“I need something,” he says and shifts his body, lying down so that they are face to face. “You can say no, of course.”

He only nods, without opening his eyes.

“There are things in…my old house. I don’t want to leave behind. I know I can’t go back there but I can’t leave it all behind.” Billy explains in a hushed tone “Do you understand?”

The room goes quiet for a few second like all sound has been swallowed by the walls.

“Yeah,” Steve says “We can go…we can ask Max when it’s good to go.”

He closes his eyes tighter and wonders how Billy will know. How will he handle picking his life piece by piece and how will he know how to get all the right things and leave behind everything that hurts.

A week after that night, Max calls and lets them know Neil and Susan have left to spend some weekend in Nevada and that she is supposed to be staying at the Wheelers. That she’ll meet them outside the house.

The sky is heavy with purple and pink, with orange and red when they leave Steve’s house. It’s twilight, and Billy is wrapped in a huge jacket that used to be Steve’s dad when he went skiing. He leans down a bit, avoiding prying eyes, even if the streets of Hawkins are empty at this hour.

When they arrive at the house Max is standing by the door, her red hair spilling from under her black beanie. She smiles and runs through the autumn leaves to hug Billy.

They walk into the house slowly, turning on the lights as they go. Steve has never been in there but he can see at the end of the long hallway the door that is meant to be Billy’s room is shut.

“You can wait in the kitchen with Max,” Billy says without turning around and opens the door.

Only an hour goes by before Billy gets back.

He is carrying a duffel bag, his fingers curled around the handles. He doesn’t look at either of them and just walks outside, towards Steve’s car. Max locks the door and Steve drives her back to the Wheeler house, tries to quiet the worry in her eyes every time she looks at Billy through the rear-view mirror.

When she gets out of the car, Billy finally speaks.

“This is my whole life packed away in one simple bag. I’m this whole entire bag.”

Steve drums his fingers against the wheel and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know the right words.

“I can’t go back. Ever” He takes a breath and it’s obvious he is trying to calm himself. “It wasn’t right – I-“Billy stops himself and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Would you want to?” Steve asks almost unconsciously. Would Billy really want to go back into that house with Neil Hargrove and everything that implied?

“No,” He answers “But I don’t know where else to go. Before I used to,” he says short of breath, “I used to have plans. Now I don’t even know who I am.”

Steve stops the car and wraps himself around him, pressing Billy impossibly close to his chest. He takes breaths, lets the tears damp a spot on his sweater.

“I don’t know if it’ll be okay,” he says “But I’ll be here.”

Billy kisses him. It’s painful but Steve clutches to him.

*

“I think someone is looking for him,” says Dustin the next day when he is driving the kids to the arcade. “We all do.”

“Someone?” Steve asks, looking at Mike, Max and Lucas in the rear-view mirror. “What do you mean?”

“Someone from before,” Lucas says leaning forward, “Yesterday there was a guy with a weird accent at the arcade, asking about what had happened at the mall.”

“Asking who?” Steve asks again, and he is a little more nervous this time, squeezes the wheel and presses the pedal harder. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Just asking around,” Mike answers, “We didn’t want to bring too much attention to it. El says he is doing better and maybe letting him know would make him nervous and angry again.”

“We are not letting him know,” says Steve, and he thinks of how he left Billy sleeping this morning without saying goodbye not to wake him. He goes a little faster.

“Slow down!” Dustin says and Steve lifts his foot. He feels a headache blossoming in the back of his head. He needs to talk to Joyce. He needs to take Billy somewhere else.

He reaches the parking lot in no time and when the kids jump out of the car he speeds off without saying goodbye. The road to his house has never seemed longer, and he is sure he has speeded by a few red lights but at this point he doesn’t care.

When he arrives, he leaves the car with the key on the driveway and runs inside the house, his hands shaking while he struggles to fit the key into the lock. He runs in and goes directly to his room but Billy isn’t there.

He is not in the living room. He is not in the bathroom. He runs around the house two times before he sits down in the couch to catch his breath and he notices, he is crying.

The space in his chest expands, like it’s always been there and he is only now realizing. It doesn’t sting or burn it inflates. It makes him feel like he can’t keep breathing, like he’s been sleeping for too long. It’s like being underwater.

A second later he gets up and goes back to his room to grab the bat. He runs to his car and without thinking, starts driving around. Somehow he ends up at the Byers house, hoping Nancy and Jonathan are there, that they can help him fix this somehow.

Joyce comes out of the house when she hears the noise of his car.

“Hey sweetheart,” she says, her smile fades away as soon as she sees the expression on Steve’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t find Hargrove,” Steve says, “Billy I don’t know where he is,” he suddenly feel like he can’t breathe again “And the kids said there was someone looking-“

She puts her hands on his shoulders and hushes him, and then she says the most perfect words in the world, that Steve never imagined.

“Billy’s inside,” she says “He came here because he needed to talk to Jane, he thought he sensed something I guess, watching him.”

Steve doesn’t get the chance to answer before his legs decide to run inside the house, pushing the door open. He hears voices coming from the kitchen and when he runs in he sees Billy sitting across from Jane, he is explaining something while she stares intently, and Will sits next to her eating quietly.

“You stupid – fuck!” Steve exclaims as he moves forward and punches Billy on the arm. He turns around, his eyes comically wide. It would be funny if Steve wasn’t so damn angry. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“I thought I’d be back before you get back,” Billy says almost laughing, he can see from the corner of his eye the surprised look on the kids faces, “Was today the day you decided to stop driving like my grandmother?”

And Steve can’t help but to laugh, all the stress draining out of him, and leans forward feeling like he is going to fall over. Billy gets up and grabs him by the shoulders, trying to guide him to the couch, but Steve leans on him, pressing his face against his exposed neck.

He wants to say so many things, he wants to tell him to never do this again, that he almost scared him to death, that he is danger now that there are people looking for him, he wants to ask Billy to run away with him, to California, to Canada, to wherever is far away for them to be safe and together. But nothing comes out.

And when he opens his mouth again the only thing he can say is,

“I think I love you.”

And Billy smiles, for the first time since he got back he fully smiles showing his teeth and pressing his tongue against them and Steve knows it’s autumn in Hawkins but there in the Byers living room he feels like he is staring directly into the California summer sun.

Billy leans forward, the hood of his jacket falling off and he kisses Steve, full on the mouth, he hears Joyce surprised gasp as she re-enters the house and the clatter of Will’s fork against the plate, but he doesn’t care.

He only grabs Billy’s face between his hands and presses him closer, thinking that if they both had to go through hell and back for this, it was damn worth it.


End file.
